1 


mill! 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF 
ART  EDUCATION 

A   PHILOSOPHICAL,    AESTHETICAL 

AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  DISCUSSION 

OF  ART  EDUCATION 

BY 

HUGO  \MUNSTERBERG 


PROFESSOR  OF  PSYCHOLOGY  IN 
HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK,   BOSTON,   CHICAGO 

THE  PRANG  EDUCATIONAL  CO. 


Copyright,    1904,  By 
THE  PRANG  EDUCATIONAL  COMPANY. 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTE 

In  presenting  this  little  book  to  the  public,  we  feel 
that  an  extended  statement  of  our  interest  in  art 
education  as  an  integral  part  of  a  well-rounded  public 
school  training  is  not  necessary. 

Since  1882  we  have  been  engaged,  under  our  pres- 
ent Company  name,  in  the  investigation  and^  promo- 
tion of  art  education  in  the  elementary  and  secondary 
schools.  During  all  this  time  we  have  endeavored  to 
treat  the  subject  in  the  most  thorough  and  inclusive 
way,  and,  in  the  preparation  of  the  various  publica- 
tions which  we  have  from  time  to  time  offered  to  the 
public  as  aids  in  teaching  art  to  the  children  in  the 
schools,  we  have  brought  to  our  assistance  the  best 
thought  and  experience  which  the  country  afforded. 

The  little  volume  here  presented  speaks  for  itself- 
The  ideas  which  it  contains  have  been  to  us  an  inspira- 
ation  and  guide  in  considering  the  broader  and  more 
humanitarian  aspects  of  the  great  subject  of  Art  as 
related  to  Education,  and  we  present  it  to  the  public, 
therefore,  in  the  belief  that  the  deep  thought  and  logical 
argument  which  it  presents  will  inspire  the  American 
educator  and  the  American  teacher  to  a  broader, 
more  thoughtful,  more  comprehensive,  and  more 
thoroughly  appreciative  conception  of  the  possibilities 
of  Art  Education. 


CONTENTS 


PART  ONE  — PHILOSOPHICAL  .  .  1 
PART  TWO  — ^STHETICAL  ...  35 
PART  THREE  — PSYCHOLOGICAL  73 
CONCLUSION  .  107 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ART  EDUCATION 


PART  ONE  — PHILOSOPHICAL 


PHILOSOPHY  of  Art  Educa- 
tion sounds,  perhaps,  to  many 
ears  like  too  pompous  a  phrase 
—  philosophy  seems  too  big  and 
too  solemn  a  word  to  be  coupled  with  the 
question  of  drawing  instruction  in  the 
public  schools.  The  word  philosophy  re- 
minds us  of  the  highest  problems  and  the 
widest  spheres,  of  morality  and  truth,  of 
soul  and  universe,  but  not  of  pencil  and 
brush,  of  curves  and  shadows,  of  tones, 
measures  and  shapes.  And  yet  philosophy 
is  not  disloyal  to  its  axioms  when  it  ap- 
proaches the  smaller  spheres  and  the  little 
things  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  each  prob- 
lem is  for  philosophical  inquiry  at  once  con- 
nected by  many  ties  with  the  most  general 
and  most  important  questions :  we  cannot 
speak  of  an  atom  without  somehow  settling 
for  the  moment  the  problem  of  the  whole 
universe.  We  cannot,  indeed,  all  the  time 


2  Principles  of  Art  Education 

see  and  do  everything  under  the  aspect  of 
eternity  and  of  absolute  ends,  but  we  can 
turn  to  the  wider  outlook  and  to  the  funda- 
mental problems  involved  whenever  we  be- 
come perplexed  and  feel  unsafe  with  regard 
to  that  which  we  are  doing  even  in  the  nar- 
rowest circle.  When  we  become  skeptical 
as  to  whether  it  is  worth  while ;  when  we 
hesitate  whether  to  go  on  or  give  up ;  — 
then  we  must  emancipate  ourselves  from 
the  limitations  of  those  superficial  discus- 
sions which  refer  merely  to  detail  and 
must  look  out  for  general  principles;  in 
short,  then,  we  must  take  the  way  of  phil- 
osophy, as  philosophy  alone  speaks  the 
final  word  on  the  value  and  meaning  of 
the  world  and  any  work  in  it. 

Yes,  philosophy  does  not  claim  as  its 
object  anything  outside  or  beyond  the 
material  with  which  the  special  sciences 
have  to  deal ;  there  is  no  division  possible 
according  to  which  one  part  of  reality  be- 
comes the  study  of  the  scientist,  and 
another  part  the  study  of  the  philosopher, 
and  still  less  has  the  philosopher  the  right 
to  interfere  with  the  dispassionate  work  of 
the  specialist.  The  philosopher  does  not 
dare  to  come  to  the  physicist  or  chemist, 


Principles  of  Art  Education  3 

to  the  astronomer  or  geologist,  to  the  his- 
torian or  psychologist,  as  an  intruder  into 
his  particular  work;  he  does  not  say, 
your  results  must  be  changed ;  the  special- 
ist alone  has  to  seek  the  special  knowledge 
and  the  special  truth,  and  he  must  seek  it 
undisturbed.  And  as  with  the  seeking  of 
knowledge  —  not  otherwise  with  all  our 
seeking  and  trying  and  doing.  The  pro- 
fessional specialist  alone  can  tell  us  how  to 
go  to  work ;  he  alone  can  teach  us  to  adjust 
the  efforts  to  the  ends,  to  select  the  tools 
and  to  prepare  the  plans,  to  fit  the  material 
and  to  train  ourselves  —  our  aim  may  be 
to  teach  or  to  preach,  to  practice  law  or  to 
compose  music,  to  cure  diseases  or  to  build 
bridges,  to  reform  practical  life  or  to  draw 
objects,  or  design  posters,  ornaments  or 
buildings.  The  philosopher  cannot  step  in 
and  show  us  how  to  do  any  one  of  these 
things.  To  all  our  knowing  and  doing  the 
specialist  alone  can  give  us  the  answers  to 
the  special  questions  and  the  advice  for  the 
special  actions ;  and  yet,  neither  in  the  one 
nor  in  the  other  field,  can  the  work  be  con- 
ceived without  ultimate  reference  to  phil- 
osophy. 

There  is  no  science  which  does  not  start 


4  Principles  of  Art  Education 

with  certain  presuppositions ;  no  action  is 
under  way  which  does  not  take  the  value 
and  worth  of  certain  ends  as  granted.  The 
specialist  cannot  examine  those  presup- 
positions or  those  ends,  he  accepts  them 
uncritically  —  it  is  the  philosopher's  task 
not  to  accept  anything  without  critical 
inquiry  and  to  dissolve  and  to  criticise 
those  presuppositions  and  ideals.  The 
physicist  must  study  all  the  material  causal 
processes  in  space  and  time  without  inter- 
ference from  the  philosopher,  but  the  phil- 
osophy of  knowledge  alone  can  tell  him 
what  space  and  time  and  casuality  mean; 
in  the  physical  work  itself  all  this  is  silently 
presupposed  and  philosophical  methods 
only  can  approach  such  ultimate  problems. 
In  a  similar  way  the  historian  or  the  psy- 
chologist may  study  the  inner  life  of  man, 
but  he  presupposes  without  criticism  that 
the  other  men  he  meets  or  has  heard  of 
have  consciousness;  that  is  a  blind  belief 
which  he  does  not  try  to  examine;  he  per- 
ceives a  man,  sees  his  movements  of  expres- 
sion, hears  his  words,  and  takes  for  granted 
that  there  is  consciousness  behind  those 
physical  phenomena;  philosophy  alone  can 
examine  such  a  fundamental  idea.  Or  if  the 


Principles  of  Art  Education          5 

reformer  works  in  the  community  toward  a 
better  fulfilment  of  duties  or  toward  a  fuller 
propagation  of  happiness,  he  presupposes 
without  hesitation  that  the  happiness  of 
the  largest  possible  number  is  desirable,  or 
that  it  is  worthy  to  perform  one's  duty: 
he  believes  in  these  ends  —  it  is  the  phil- 
osopher who  inquires  critically  into  all  the 
possible  ideals. 

Philosophy, —  that  is,  the  research  into 
the  fundamental  presuppositions  and  ulti- 
mate values  and  ends  of  all  our  knowing 
and  doing, — is  thus  the  only  inquiry  which 
does  not  itself  begin  with  presuppositions, 
which  does  not  accept  any  beliefs  and 
theories  beforehand,  .which  does  not  build 
upon  the  basis  of  any  science  or  activity, 
which  is  necessarily  itself  the  basis  of  every 
possible  knowledge  and  duty.  It  starts, 
therefore,  not  from  any  scientific  results, 
as  one  of  its  functions  must  be  to  find  out 
what  right  and  value  belong  to  science. 
It  starts  from  the  immediate  experience  of 
life,  and  from  here  it  must  settle,  or  at 
least  understand,  the  meaning  and  value  of 
every  possible  function  of  life.  It  is  thus 
the  court  of  last  resort  for  every  work,  a 
court  which  never  takes  cognizance  of  the 


6  Principles  of  Art  Education 

question  whether  the  work  is  well  calcu- 
lated to  reach  its  goal  —  leaving  this  fully 
to  the  specialist  —  but  which  decides 
whether  the  aim  and  the  presuppositions 
are  right  and  what  their  value  is  compared 
with  others. 

Before  this  highest  court  the  case  of  art 
instruction  and  SBsthetic  education  ought 
to  be  examined.  Here,  as  everywhere,  the 
professional  specialist,  the  educator,  the 
artist,  the  draughtsman,  has  alone  to  decide 
how  the  ends  can  be  reached ;  but  whether 
the  end  is  a  true  or  a  mistaken  ideal,  a 
purpose  not  less  valuable  than  knowledge 
or  merely  a  diversion  which  wastes  the 
school  hours  of  youth,  must  be  settled  by 
the  philosopher.  Whoever  follows  the 
discussion  of  art  instruction,  knows  that 
the  arguments,  not  only  of  the  opponents 
but  often  also  of  the  friends  of  aesthetic 
education,  appeal  to  a  much  lower  court, 
as  they  almost  always  begin  with  a  com- 
plete presupposition.  One  point  is  con- 
sidered and  respected  as  certain,  in  all 
these  usual  discussions,  and  blindly  ac- 
cepted without  examination:  and  that  is, 
that  the  world  of  "  things  "  as  they  really 
are,  can  be  learned  only  by  the  knowledge 


Principles  of  Art  Education          7 

which  the  sciences  impart.  The  conse- 
quence of  this  popular  presupposition  seems 
to  be  that  every  dealing  in  school  with 
those  "  things  "  is  either  serviceable  to  the 
imparting  of  scientific  knowledge  and  to 
the  training  in  the  treatment  of  these 
objects  of  science,  or  it  does  not  refer  to 
the  true  real  world  at  all,  but  is  merely  a 
kind  of  playing  with  imagined  things  and 
thus  useless,  perhaps  even  dangerous,  as  it 
antagonizes  an  understanding  of  reality; 
in  the  best  case  a  refined  luxury  which 
develops  the  imagination  but  cannot  enter 
into  competition  with  the  study  of  the  real 
universe.  The  practical  results  of  such 
views  are  evident.  Those  school-boards 
and  superintendents,  theoretical  educators 
and  practical  teachers  who  argue  more  or 
less  consciously  in  this  direction,  will  cer- 
tainly not  object  to  a  fair  training  in  the 
use  of  pencil  and  brush.  But  they  will 
emphasize  that  it  has  to  suit  two  purposes. 
Firstly,  it  must  develop  the  skilfulness  in 
exact  representation  by  copying  the  model ; 
this  appears  useful,  as  the  power  to  draw 
with  exactitude  is  necessary  both  for  the 
communication  of  true  objective  impres- 
sions and  for  the  technical  purposes  of 


8  Principles  of  Art  Education 

practical  work  on  the  real  things.  Secondly, 
it  must  develop  the  carefulness  of  observa- 
tion —  whoever  copies  nature  becomes 
aware  of  nature's  details  and  thus  devel- 
ops the  observing  discrimination  which  is 
so  desirable  for  full  information.  The 
drawing  from  casts,  supplemented  perhaps 
by  geometrical  drawing,  serves  the  first 
purpose  excellently ;  and  the  drawing  from 
flowers,  anatomical  objects,  stones  and 
microscopical  tissues,  as  required  in  the 
natural  science  lessons,  is  an  ideal  means 
to  the  second  end.  As  this  naturalistic 
fixation  of  impressions  by  the  students  in 
zoology  and  botany  involves,  besides  the 
careful  observation,  also  a  training  in  skil- 
ful drawing,  it  even  becomes  a  question 
whether  this  alone  cannot  meet  both  ends ; 
even  the  casts  and  the  geometrical  drawing 
thus  become  superfluous,  and  the  instruc- 
tion in  natural  sciences  can  thus  easily  and 
usefully  carry  all  the  art  instruction  which 
is  necessary.  That  is,  indeed,  the  opinion 
of  many  serious  scholars  —  and  yet  no  one 
can  doubt  that  it  means  the  death  of  all 
those  ambitions,  hopes  and  idealistic  in- 
spirations which  the  friends  of  art,  con- 
nected with  the  drawing  lessons  of  the 


Principles  of  Art  Education          9 

younger  generation,  are  desirous  of  seeing 
realized. 

But  we  have  said  that  all  these  popular 
arguments  start  from  a  certain  conviction, 
from  the  conviction  that  science,  knowl- 
edge, scholarship  alone  can  unveil  to  us 
the  true  nature  of  things  and  that  we  do 
not  respect  the  real  world  in  which  we 
live  when  we  leave  the  sphere  of  natural- 
istic knowledge.  This  conviction  alone 
gave  the  imposing  background  to  the  copy- 
ing of  botanical  or  zoological  specimens, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  degraded  the  draw- 
ing for  artistic  purposes  on  the  ground 
that  it  leads  the  youth  away  from  the  real 
world  and  that  it  cannot  be  the  business  of 
the  school  to  train  artists.  But  that  con- 
viction itself  was  nowhere  critically  exam- 
ined ;  it  was  accepted  as  a  belief,  and  as 
long  as  the  argument  is  carried  on  before 
the  tribunal  of  science  a  doubt  of  that 
belief  cannot  have  any  effect.  In  the  realm 
of  science  that  conviction  is  the  necessary 
presupposition  without  which  no  science 
can  exist.  From  the  standpoint  of  science 
an  artistic  interpretation  of  nature  must, 
indeed,  remain  an  arbitrary  treatment  with- 
out objective  justification.  But  we  have 


10         Principles  of  Art  Education 

seen  that  the  special  science  cannot  decide 
as  to  ultimate  values  and  presuppositions  ; 
philosophy  alone  can  question  whether  that 
conviction  and  belief  in  the  superiority  of 
the  scientific  truth  is  well  based. 

We  ask  now,  therefore,  if  it  is  true  that 
science  alone  shows  us  the  things  as  they 
really  are  and  that  an  artistic  rendering  of 
the  world  is  less  true  to  the  reality  in 
which  we  live.  It  is  a  question  which 
leads  at  once  from  the  chance  starting 
point  to  the  deepest  problems  of  truth  and 
beauty.  And  its  discussion  cannot  be 
carried  on  by  catchy  phrases  and  emotional 
appeals  to  our  thrill  of  delight  in  works  of 
beauty  —  it  needs  hard  serious  thought 
which  goes  in  a  philosophical  spirit  to  the 
bottom  of  things  and  really  frees  us  from 
all  prejudices  and  presuppositions.  It  is, 
indeed,  not  an  easy  task,  as  it  means 
emancipation  for  the  moment  from  all  our 
school  knowledge  and  from  our  cherished 
theories,  in  so  far  as  that  knowledge  and 
those  theories  have  penetrated  our  view  of 
the  world  and  made  it  extremely  difficult  to 
return  to  a  naive  view  of  reality.  Never- 
theless, this  is  the  only  way  open  to  us,  as 
every  road  which  starts  from  the  results  ol 


Principles  of  Art  Education         11 

science  must  necessarily  lead  to  unfairness 
with  regard  to  a  professedly  unscientific 
interpretation  of  our  surroundings. 

It  is  claimed  that  physics  and  chemistry 
and  biology  and  psychology  and  history 
give  us  an  account  of  all  the  physical  and 
psychical  things  which  surround  us  and  of 
ourselves ;  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
universe  which  cannot  be  included  in  such 
a  scientific  report.  The  scientist,  whether 
he  deals  with  stones  or  stars,  with  plants 
or  men,  with  individuals  or  nations,  claims 
to  show  us  what  they  really  are  :  he  as- 
sumes to  give  us  the  truth  about  them, 
and,  as  we  cannot  prove  that  his  so-called 
truth  is  wrong,  it  seems  that  all  things  in 
heaven  and  on  earth  cannot  be  anything 
else  than  that  which  the  scholar  with  his 
textbooks  has  proved  them  to  be.  There 
cannot  be  an  account  of  reality  which  is  of 
equal  value  with  the  "  true  "  one. 

We  all  know  how  the  scientist  reaches 
his  important  results  on  which  it  is  claimed 
our  whole  modern  civilized  life  is  built  up, 
and  which  have  made  our  technique  possi- 
ble and  have  given  us  an  understanding  of 
the  past.  He  analyzes  most  carefully  the 
objects  which  he  observes,  the  material 


12         Principles  of  Art  Education 

and  the  mental  ones,  and  thus  finds  their 
elements;  the  physical  world  dissolves 
itself  into  biological  cells  and  chemical 
elements  and  physical  molecules  and  all, 
ultimately,  into  mechanical  atoms,  while 
the  psychical  world  shows  itself  to  be  made 
up  of  elements  which  the  psychologist  calls 
sensations.  The  whole  universe,  and 
man's  life  in  it,  becomes  a  gigantic  com- 
bination of  atoms  and  sensations.  But  the 
description  of  the  elements  is  not  the  only 
task  of  the  scientist.  His  second  great 
aim  is,  as  everybody  knows,  explanation, 
that  is,  the  understanding  of  all  processes 
as  effects  of  foregoing  causes  and,  corre- 
spondingly, as  causes  of  subsequent  effects. 
Description  and  explanation  are  thus  as- 
sumed to  cover  the  whole  ground  of  physi- 
cal and  psychological  researches,  and  if  all 
is  described  in  its  elements  and  explained 
by  its  causes,  we  then  know  the  real  world 
and  every  other  possible  account  must 
remain  an  arbitrary  fancy  below  the  level 
of  truth. 

But  are  description  and  explanation  after 
all  really  two  different  processes  ?  As  soon 
as  we  look  a  little  deeper  into  the  mech- 
anism of  scientific  thinking  we  discover 


Principles  of  Art  Education        13 

that  it  is  not  so.  The  describe!  says: 
This  object  has  these  elements,  this  ocean 
yonder  contains  salt  and  its  water  contains 
hydrogen  and  oxygen  and  each  drop  con- 
tains trillions  of  atoms.  What  does  he 
mean  by  that  ?  If  we  ask  him,  he  will  say : 
I  mean  by  that  an  account  of  reality,  and 
that  the  account  is  true,  I  can  prove. 
How  does  he  prove  it  ?  Well,  he  takes  a 
pailful  of  that  sea  water  and  evaporates  it 
and  shows  us  the  salt  as  a  result ;  he  brings 
a  galvanic  current  through  the  water  and 
shows  us  the  division  of  the  water  into 
hydrogen  and  oxygen ;  and  if  we  ask  him 
finally  to  prove  that  each  drop  of  water  is 
made  from  atoms,  he  begins  to  show  the 
changes  through  which  the  water  passes 
under  strong  pressure,  with  high  tempera- 
ture and  low  temperature,  and  so  on,  to 
give  us  mathematical  proofs  that  these 
changes  cannot  be  understood  without  the 
theory  of  atomism.  Such  proof  he  thinks 
must  convince  us  :  we  can  taste  the  crystal- 
ized  salt,  we  can  see  how  the  balloons  get 
filled  by  the  gases,  how  the  steam  is  formed. 
But  does  such  proof  really  give  us  what 
we  asked  for  ?  When  the  salt  is  crystal- 
ized,  when  the  hydrogen  is  in  the  balloon, 


14         Principles  of  Art  Education 

when  the  steam  is  evaporated,  we  do  not 
have  any  longer  the  sea  water  about  whose 
elements  we  inquired ;  the  water  has  been 
transformed  into  something  else,  and,  while 
the  scientist  was  expected  to  show  us  what 
the  water  zs,  he  has  practically  shown  us 
by  his  proofs  only  into  what  the  water  can 
be  transformed.  When  he  says  the  water 
"contains"  the  salt  and  the  gases,  he 
means  that  certain  processes,  for  instance 
evaporation,  have  the  effect  of  transform- 
ing the  given  substance  into  such  salt  and 
such  gases,  while  nobody  could  get  salt 
out  of  a  solution  of  sugar.  The  scientific 
descriptive  account  of  the  elements  of  an 
object  thus  does  not  give  any  knowledge 
of  the  object  itself  at  all,  but  it  tells  us 
what  changes  can  be  produced  through  an 
analysis  of  that  object,  what  effects  we 
must  expect  from  it,  what  new  objects  can 
be  got  from  it.  The  description  of  the 
elements  bring  us  thus  not  nearer  to 
the  thing  itself,  it  takes  us  away  from  the 
thing  and  it  teaches  us  with  what  effects 
the  thing  is  connected ;  in  other  words : 
the  "  elements  "  are  merely  expressions  of 
justified  expectations  as  to  the  behavior  of 
the  thing.  No  proof  and  no  demonstration 


Principles  of  Art  Education         15 

can  go  behind  that  or  beyond  that;  we 
may  tear  in  pieces  or  crush  the  thing,  we 
may  pulverize  or  boil  it  to  show  what  it 
contains,  but  we  are  always  producing  a 
new  object  in  the  place  of  the  old  one :  the 
powder  is  not  the  stone  —  we  have  shown 
only  that  the  stone  can  be  transformed  into 
powder;  that  is,  we  have  proved  that  we 
can  bring  about  a  certain  change  and  effect 
with  the  stone. 

As  soon  as  we  have  grasped  the  deeper 
meaning  of  all  "  analysis  "  we  see  that  it  is 
inseparable  from  the  study  of  causes  and 
effects.  Description  and  explanation  are 
not  two  separate  logical  tasks,  but  merely 
one  —  description  works  toward  explana- 
tion, and  there  cannot  be  any  descriptive 
analysis  which  does  not  find  its  real  mean- 
ing in  the  reference  to  that  which  will 
happen  with  the  thing  —  that  is,  to  the 
effects  which  it  causes.  Every  progress  in 
the  description  of  the  world  has  meant  a 
step  forward  towards  the  understanding  of 
causal  relations  and  nothing  else ;  and 
every  new  insight  into  causal  laws  has 
brought  new  modes  of  description.  The 
day  when  mechanics  is  able  to  describe 
every  atom  and  every  action  in  the  world 


16         Principles  of  Art  Education 

no  causal  problem  will  remain  unsolved ; 
the  ideal  description,  at  the  same  time, 
will  be  the  ideal  explanation.  All  that 
science  can  teach  us  about  the  object  O  is 
thus  merely  how  it  was  caused  by  L  and 
M  and  N  and  how  it  will  bring  about  the 
effect  P  and  Q  and  R ;  and  those  character- 
istic expectations  as  to  P  and  Q  and  R 
and  those  references  to  L  and  M  and  N  we 
express  and  condense  in  the  account  of  the 
elements  of  O  ;  but  O  itself  remains  always 
O  :  we  cannot  creep  into  it,  we  cannot  get 
more  of  it  than  to  know  that  it  is  O,  and 
if  we  break  it  in  pieces  to  show  its  parts, 
then  it  is  a  group  of  P's  and  R's  but  no 
longer  the  O.  There  is  no  escape :  science 
does  not  care*  at  all  for  O  itself;  even 
when  science  enumerates  O's  so-called 
elements,  it  speaks  in  reality  not  of  O  but 
of  its  causal  and  logical  relations  to  L,  M, 
N,  P,  Q,  R,  and  the  whole  alphabet  of 
things.  Science  makes  us  believe  that  it 
speaks  of  the  thing,  and  yet  informs  us 
merely  of  the  thing's  relations  to  other 
things  in  the  universe.  Whenever  we 
want  to  grasp  one  piece  of  the  world, 
science  takes  it  out  of  our  hand,  shows  us 
instead  of  itself  a  thousand  other  things  to 


Principles  of  Art  Education         17 

which  it  is  related,  pushes  us  ever  forward 
to  discover  new  causes  and  effects,  and 
hides  the  situation  by  calling  this  search 
for  the  future  connections  an  "  analysis " 
and  those  features  which  determine  those 
connections  the  "elements."  It  may  be 
said  the  only  meaning  of  all  knowledge, 
description  and  explanation,  is  the  search 
for  the  connection  of  things  —  when  the 
world  has  become  to  the  human  intellect  a 
connected  whole,  the  goal  is  reached. 

Such  insight  into  connections  is,  of 
course,  of  fundamental  importance,  because 
all  our  practical  actions  must  be  regulated 
by  it.  If  I  want  to  act,  the  things  in  the 
world  are  my  means  and  tools  —  I  do  not 
care  what  they  "  are,"  I  then  care  only  for 
what  they  can  produce,  how  far  they  can 
serve  my  ends.  And  if  I  deal  with  men,  I 
do  not  ask  what  they  really  "are  "  but  how 
I  can  influence  them,  what  I  can  expect 
from  them,  how  I  can  connect  them  with 
my  hopes  and  fears.  If  I  want  to  under- 
stand a  product  of  civilization,  an  institu- 
tion, a  law,  a  religion,  a  government,  again 
I  must  needs  establish  their  connections 
with  the  human  efforts  of  the  past,  their 
causes  and  effects,  their  relations  to  all  the 


18         Principles  of  Art  Education 

institutions ;  and,  if  I  want  to  grasp  a 
thought,  I  must  understand  its  relations  to 
the  other  thoughts  which  are  involved  and 
connected  with  it.  All  that  the  philologist, 
the  historian,  the  psychologist,  the  nat- 
uralist are  offering  is  indeed  invaluable  at 
every  step  in  the  walk  of  life,  and  from 
the  primitive  knowledge  that  guides  the 
child's  behavior  in  the  nursery  and  the 
savage's  life  in  the  forests  up  to  the  most 
complex  knowledge  which  directs  the 
actions  of  the  modern  engineer  or  physi- 
cian, every  new  understanding  of  connec- 
tion has  been  an  assistance  in  the  world  of 
men  and  things,  of  nature  and  civilization 
in  which  we  live. 

There  is  thus  no  reproach  to  the  scientist 
in  our  insisting  that  he  gives  us  knowledge 
not  only  of  the  thing  itself,  but  also  of  its 
connections ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  his 
truth  —  his  description  and  explanation 
—  does  not  bring  us  nearer  to  the  reality 
of  the  thing  itself,  —  in  fact,  it  leads  us 
away  from  the  object  we  are  interested  in, 
leads  us  away  to  other  objects  with  which 
it  may  be  connected. 

How  vain  sounds  now  the  claim  that 
the  truth  of  science  is  the  only  possible 


Principles  of  Art  Education        19 

truth  and  that  every  presentation  of  objects 
which  is  not  based  on  scientific  knowledge 
carries  us  away  from  the  objective  facts. 
No,  it  is  science  which  veils  the  real  thing 
which  we  want  to  know,  and  turns  our 
attention  to  that  which  the  thing  is  not. 
Is  it  not  possible  to  come  nearer  to  the 
object  itself,  to  grasp  its  true  reality,  to 
feel  its  life,  to  sink  into  it,  to  penetrate 
into  its  fullness  ?  Instead  of  crumbling  it% 
into  pieces,  —  for  its  scattered  fragments 
are  no  longer  the  thing,  —  is  it  not  possible 
to  give  the  whole  of  our  mind  to  the 
presentation  of  the  one  thing  alone,  with 
all  that  it  gives  us,  with  all  that  it  shows 
and  suggests,  while  the  world  about  it  and 
the  world  around  us  are  forgotten  ?  The 
highest  truth  about  the  thing  must  be  the 
knowledge  of  the  thing  itself,  not  of  its 
causes  and  its  effects ;  the  thing  itself  with 
all  its  richness  and  all  its  meanings  to  the 
human  mind,  and  not  the  substitution 
which  the  scientist  proposes  for  the  expla- 
nation of  future  events.  The  thing  itself 
is  not  its  past  or  its  future,  it  wants  to  be 
understood  just  as  it  offers  itself  to  our 
mind  in  the  present  experience,  and  there 
cannot  be  any  rest  for  us  until  we  accept 


20         Principles  of  Art  Education 

what  it  offers  this  moment  instead  of  look- 
ing with  the  eyes  of  science  to  what  it 
promises  for  the  future.  The  highest 
truth  thus  lies  not  in  the  inference  to 
future  transformations,  but  in  the  apprecia- 
tion of  present  offerings ;  not  in  the  study 
of  the  elements,  but  in  the  acceptance  of 
the  whole  in  its  human  relations.  Thus, 
if  you  really  want  the  thing  itself,  there  is 
only  one  way  to  get  it :  you  must  separate 
it  from  everything  else,  you  must  discon- 
nect it  from  causes  and  effects,  you  must 
bring  it  before  the  mind  so  that  nothing 
else  but  this  one  presentation  fills  the 
mind,  so  that  there  remains  no  room  for 
anything  besides  it.  If  that  ever  can  be 
reached,  the  result  must  be  clear :  for  the 
object  it  means  complete  isolation;  for 
the  subject,  it  means  complete  repose  in  the 
object,  and  that  is  complete  satisfaction 
with  the  object ;  and  that  is,  finally,  merely 
another  name  for  the  enjoyment  of  beauty. 
To  isolate  the  object  for  the  mind,  means 
to  make  it  beautiful,  for  it  fills  the  mind 
without  an  idea  of  anything  else :  we  are 
interested  in  the  impression  as  it  is  in 
itself,  without  any  reference  to  anything 
outside  of  it  in  space  and  time ;  and  this 


Principles  of  Art  Education        21 

complete  repose,  where  the  objective  im- 
pression becomes  for  us  an  ultimate  end  in 
itself,  is  the  only  possible  content  of  the 
true  experience  of  beauty. 

Yes,  connection  is  science,  but  the  work 
of  art  is  isolation ;  more  than  that,  isolation 
is  beauty  whether  nature  or  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  artist  offers  it.  We  have  here 
reached  the  highest  point  of  a  philosophical 
discussion,  the  point  from  which  we  can 
overlook  the  two  worlds  together,  the 
world  of  knowledge  and  the  world  of 
beauty.  Neither  the  scientist  nor  the  artist 
gives  us  the  world  of  immediate  experi- 
ence, as  in  our  real  life  we  experience 
neither  a  system  of  connected  things  nor  a 
series  of  isolated  objects.  To  produce 
a  connected  system  or  to  have  an  object 
isolated,  and  thus  cut  loose  and  separated 
from  everything  else  in  the  world,  is  to 
demand  an  artificial  transformation  of 
reality  to  serve  the  purpose  of  our  will.  As 
every  descriptive  and  explanatory  knowl- 
edge, yes,  every  analysis,  serves  indeed  the 
purpose  of  connection,  every  aesthetic  ren- 
dering of  the  world  really  serves  this  other 
end,  to  isolate  the  factors  of  experience,  to 
make  them  independent  of  every  possible 


22         Principles  of  Art  Education 

connection,  and  thus  to  present  them  to 
our  mind  just  as  they  really  are  in  them- 
selves. Wherever  nature  gives  us  such  an 
experience  which  is  closed  in  itself  and 
does  not  point  to  anything  else,  and  brings 
to  silence  every  practical  desire  and  makes 
us  forget  all  things  besides  the  one  which 
offers  itself  to  our  mind,  there  nature  her- 
self is  the  artist.  But  more  often,  the 
genius  of  men  must  transform  chance  ex- 
perience, must  paint  the  landscape,  must 
form  in  marble  the  figure,  must  express  in 
songs  the  emotional  affection,  must  render 
in  dramas  the  actions  of  men. 

That  ocean  yonder  was  my  experience 
which  I  wanted  to  know  in  all  its  truth 
and  reality.  The  scientist  came  and  showed 
me  the  salt  which  was  crystalized  out  of  it, 
and  the  gases  into  which  the  galvanic  cur- 
rent dissolved  it,  and  the  mathematical 
curves  in  which  the  drops  were  moving, — 
most  useful  knowledge,  indeed,  for  all  my 
practical  purposes, —  but  in  every  one  of 
his  statements,  that  ocean  itself  with  its 
waves  and  its  surf  and  its  radiant  blueness 
had  disappeared.  But  let  us  not  ask  what 
can  be  done  with  the  water,  how  it  can  be 
used,  what  is  its  economic  value,  how  it 


Principles  of  Art  Education        23 

will  carry  my  boat,  what  has  caused  its 
movements ;  but  let  us  ask  only  once,  what 
is  it  really  that  I  see ;  the  water  itself  must 
give  us  the  answer.  Let  it  express  itself, 
give  to  it,  too,  a  chance  to  communicate  to 
us  all  that  it  can  bring  to  our  mind,  to 
show  us  to  its  best  advantage  every  one  of 
its  features,  to  tell  us  its  own  story,  to 
bring  to  the  highest  expression  every  hidden 
meaning  of  reality ;  let  us  only  once  give 
our  whole  attention  to  that  one  courageous, 
breezy  wave,  which  thunders  there  against 
the  rock ;  let  us  forget  what  there  was  and 
what  there  will  be ;  let  us  live  through  one 
pulse-beat  of  experience  in  listening  merely 
to  that  wave  alone,  seeing  its  foam  alone, 
tasting  its  breeze  alone, —  and  in  that  one 
thrill  we  have  grasped  the  thing  itself  as 
it  really  is  in  its  fullest  truth.  The  painter 
alone  can  succeed  in  holding  that  wave  in 
its  wonderful  swing  on  his  canvas,  and  his 
golden  frame  can  separate  that  painted 
wave  forever  from  the  rest  of  the  universe. 
He  has  created,  then,  a  thing  of  beauty, 
because  it  satisfies  us  as  it  is;  and  what 
his  brush  tells  us  is  not  less  true  than  the 
formula  of  the  mathematician  who  calcu- 
lated the  movement  of  the  wave,  and  the 


24         Principles  of  Art  Education 

formula  of  the  chemist  who  separated  the 
elements.  But,  of  course,  the  painter  must 
really  succeed,  the  frame  alone  cannot 
isolate  that  bit  of  experience.  If  his  paint- 
ing is  nothing  but  a  colored  photograph 
which  makes  us  ask,  what  the  name  of  that 
shore  is,  whether  there  is  good  bathing  and 
fishing  there,  and  where  the  way  from  that 
rock  leads,  then,  of  course,  we  are  in  the 
midst  of  connections,  the  thing  of  beauty 
has  again  become  a  thing  of  information ; 
we  may  have  a  good  advertisement  of  a 
sea-shore  place,  but  a  poor  painting;  the 
real  work  of  art  on  the  other  hand  holds 
our  mind  to  the  object  itself,  its  way  leads 
nowhere  and  its  frame  ends  its  world.  And 
so  we  may  say :  to  isolate  an  object  for  our 
mind ;  to  show  the  object  as  it  really  is ; 
to  give  us  repose  in  the  object ;  to  make 
the  object  beautiful ; — are  only  four  differ- 
ent expressions  of  the  same  fact. 

One  aspect  more  ought  to  be  emphasized 
at  once.  Science  is  connection,  but  not 
every  connection  is  science ;  art  is  isolation, 
but  not  every  isolation  is  art.  In  fancy, 
or  in  superstition,  we  might  mentally  con- 
nect any  objects  whatever  in  the  world, 
but  that  would  not  be  knowledge  ;  and,  on 


Principles  of  Art  Education        25 

the  other  hand,  we  might,  in  a  sensual  en- 
joyment, give  over  our  whole  mind  to  any- 
thing which  captured  our  senses,  and  yet 
that  alone  would  not  constitute  the  basis 
for  a  declaration  of  beauty.  Both  science 
and  art,  knowledge  and  beauty,  are  inde- 
pendent of  individual,  personal  desires  and 
instincts  and  fancies.  Both  make  a  gen- 
eral claim  ;  they  are  not  meant  as  individual 
decisions,  they  demand  an  over-individual 
value  ;  that  which  is  knowledge  for  one  is 
taken  to  be  knowledge  for  all ;  that  which 
is  declared  beautiful  by  one  is  assumed  to 
appear  beautiful  to  all.  Knowledge  and 
beauty  are  thus  postulates :  you  ought  to 
connect  the  things  of  the  world  in  this 
way  if  you  want  knowledge,  and  you  ought 
to  isolate  the  things  of  the  world  in  that 
way  if  you  want  beauty.  It  is  exactly  as 
with  the  prescriptions  of  morality ;  any 
one  may  construct  individual  rules,  but  he 
can  demand  only  that  the  others  fulfil  his 
prescriptions  if  they  want  to  escape  his 
punishment,  there  is  no  moral  obligation 
in  such  an  individual,  arbitrary  rule. 
Morality,  on  the  other  hand,  is  over-individ- 
ual, and  claims  you  ought  to  follow  it 
even  to  your  personal  disadvantage.  This 


26         Principles  of  Art  Education 

"  ought "  which  morality  attaches  to  human 
actions,  logic  attaches  to  the  scientific  con- 
nections of  things,  and  aesthetics  attaches 
to  the  artistic  isolation  of  things.  If  we 
give  our  whole  mind  to  an  object  which 
we  isolate  with  the  understanding  that  we 
do  not  claim  that  it  ought  to  absorb  the 
mind  of  others,  that  object  may  be  agree- 
able but  cannot  be  beautiful,  just  as  the 
individual  rule  which  the  master  gives  to 
his  servants  may  be  useful  and  practical, 
but  cannot  as  such  be  of  moral  value. 
That  which  we  eat  and  drink,  though  de- 
licious, can  as  such  never  be  beautiful, 
because  we  destroy  it  while  we  are  enjoy- 
ing it,  and  in  our  pleasure  we  thus  exclude 
the  demand  that  others  ought  to  enjoy  it 
with  us ;  the  more  lasting  the  object,  the 
larger  the  circle  of  those  individuals  which 
can  take  part  in  it  with  us,  the  greater  are 
its  aesthetic  possibilities.  The  statue  of 
snow  stands  on  a  lower  plane  than  that  of 
marble. 

And  one  more  consequence  ought  to  be 
considered  from  the  beginning  —  if  science 
means  over-individual  connection  and  art 
over-individual  isolation,  one  most  impor- 
tant difference  of  scientific  and  of  artistic 


Principles  of  Art  Education         27 

work  must  follow  at  once.  The  scientist 
seeks  a  connection  whose  ideal  is  thus  the 
complete  system  which  comprises  the  whole 
universe,  and  which  leaves,  therefore,  no 
room  for  anything  outside  of  the  one  sys- 
tem ;  there  can  be,  therefore,  only  one 
science  and  all  scholars  of  the  world  are 
co-operating  in  working  out  that  one  sys- 
tem of  knowledge ;  every  progress  made  is 
for  all  time  and  for  everybody.  For  the 
world  of  art,  exactly  the  opposite  must  be 
true ;  if  beauty  means  isolation,  the  perfect 
rendering  of  one  object  has  in  itself  no 
relation  to  the  rendering  of  other  objects 
and  every  one  can  try  the  process  of  isolat- 
ing again.  While  a  scientific  problem 
once  solved  is  solved  for  all  time,  an 
aesthetic  subject  can  be  taken  up  with  ever 
new  freshness.  The  Pythagorean  theorem 
cannot  be  created  a  second  time  after 
Pythagoras,  but  Madonnas  can  be  painted, 
and  will  be  painted,  without  end  after 
Raphael,  and  again  and  again  Spring  and 
Love  will  be  sung  in  lyrical  poems.  Sci- 
ence, therefore,  moves  forward  in  a  straight 
direction,  every  generation  knows  more 
than  the  foregoing  did,  but  art  does  not 
know  such  continuity.  The  continuity  in 


28         Principles  of  Art  Education 

the  history  of  art  is  formed  by  the  influence 
which  the  works  of  art  have  on  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  artists  of  a  later  generation ; 
a  cumulative  influence  thus  certainly  exists 
and  every  artist  stands  to-day  under  the 
influence  of  the  aesthetic  productions  of 
two  thousand  years:  but  the  artist  of  to- 
day does  not  continue  the  work  of  the 
artist  of  yesterday ;  every  work  is  closed 
in  itself  and  has  no  objective  reference  to 
any  other  work  of  art. 

But  we  must  return  to  our  central 
proposition.  We  said  that  science  con- 
nects but  art  isolates  ;  that  we  find  knowl- 
edge in  transforming  the  object  so  that  it 
can  be  linked  with  all  others,  but  that  we 
find  beauty  in  transforming  the  object  so 
that  it  stands  for  itself  alone,  gives  us  its 
own  reality,  separated  from  the  rest  of  the 
world.  We  can  characterize  the  difference 
also  by  saying  the  scientist  analyzes  where 
the  artist  interprets,  the  scientist  seeks 
elements  where  the  artist  aims  at  the 
meaning,  the  scientist  works  towards  laws 
where  the  artist  seeks  values,  the  scientist 
explains  where  the  artist  appreciates ;  but 
both,  that  must  be  clear,  aim  to  give  us  an 
understanding  of  the  objective  world,  both 


Principles  of  Art  Education         29 

give  us  truths.  Both  are,  on  the  other 
hand,  more  than  mere  passive  mirrors  of 
the  world ;  both  come  with  subjective 
energies  towards  the  world,  as  the  scientific 
account  with  its  aiming  at  connection  in- 
volves just  as  many  subjective  activities  as 
the  artistic  rendering  with  its  aim  towards 
isolation  of  the  special  thing. 

Whether  the  one  truth  is  more  valuable 
than  the  other  depends  upon  our  purpose. 
The  purpose  for  which  we  looked  out  in 
scientific  knowledge  was  practical  mastery 
of  the  world  for  the  outer  achievements ; 
we  had  to  know  what  causes  were  con- 
nected with  what  effects.  No  other  kind 
of  truth  can  help  us  for  this  end ;  what 
can  be  the  use  of  sinking  with  our  mind 
into  an  isolated  object,  which  by  its  isola- 
tion is  separated  from  its  causes  and  effects 
if  we  want  to  manage  the  affairs  of  practi- 
cal life  ?  But  is  that  really  the  only  end 
in  our  existence  ;  is  the  world  really  for  us 
merely  a  material  to  be  used  and  never  a 
material  to  be  enjoyed ;  is  the  object  merely 
a  cause  to  produce  certain  effects,  never  an 
end  in  itself;  can  our  life  be  complete  in 
itself  if  everything  comes  in  question  for 
us  merely  as  a  means  to  something  else 


30         Principles  of  Art  Education 

and  never  as  valuable  in  its  own  offering  ; 
does  not  our  mind  in  all  the  striving  and 
rushing  of  daily  life  long  for  the  rest  of 
satisfaction  ?  Certainly  our  life  would  not 
be  worth  living  if  the  transitory  stages  of 
using  the  world  were  not  alternating  with 
periods  through  which  our  mind  rests  in 
the  world.  Religion  and  philosophy  seek 
this  rest  of  the  mind,  this  repose  of  our 
existence  in  the  contemplation  of  the  eter- 
nal totality.  The  lover  of  beauty  seeks  it 
in  the  contemplation  of  the  single  object ; 
he  isolates  it  from  the  world  and  by  that 
act  of  isolation  it  does  not  come  in  ques- 
tion any  more  as  means  to  an  effect,  as  tool 
for  an  end,  as  product  of  a  cause,  as  a  step- 
ping-stone to  something  else,  but  merely 
in  its  own  existence,  and,  therefore,  because 
it  does  not  suggest  anything  outside  of 
itself,  it  brings  a  final  rest  to  the  mind  of 
the  subject.  Now  the  tree  is  not  lumber, 
the  animal  is  not  food,  the  waterfall  is  not 
machine  power,  but  in  their  beauty  alone 
are  they  appreciated. 

Exactly  as  the  power  of  knowledge  must 
be  developed  through  training  and  educa- 
tion for  the  purposes  of  later  practical  life, 
so  the  power  of  aesthetic  appreciation 


Principles  of  Art  Education         31 

must  be  developed  in  early  youth  for  this 
not  less  important  and  not  less  valuable 
other  aim  of  human  life — to  seek  rest  in 
the  things  of  our  world.  Nowhere,  per- 
haps, is  this  need  greater  than  among  our 
American  youth.  Not  only  the  impres- 
sions of  the  life  of  adults,  not  only  the 
rush  and  push  of  the  public  life  which 
they  see,  suggest  a  one-sided  aspect,  an 
unbalanced  over-estimation  of  the  practical, 
of  the  looking  on  things  as  means  of  prac- 
tical ends ;  but  even  their  play  and  their 
childish  enjoyment  is  but  imitation,  fully 
shaped  by  this  same  one-sided  idea.  The 
European  children  are  accustomed  to 
devices  of  play  which  stimulate  the  imagi- 
nation first  of  all;  the  American  child 
grows  up  with  movement  plays  which 
train  the  skill  and  the  practical  initiative, 
but  are  useless  for  the  development  of 
imaginative  power.  A  youth  who  does  not 
learn  early  to  appreciate  the  objects  in 
their  own  meaning,  but  sees  them  as  causes 
for  effects,  cannot  be  expected  to  have  in 
later  life  other  than  practical  interests  and 
must  lack  that  repose  which  gives  the  only 
complete  satisfaction,  that  repose  which  a 
mere  restless  striving  for  practical  ends 


32         Principles  of  Art  Education 

ever  promises  but  can  never  give.  The 
most  systematic  effort  must  be  made  to 
train  the  young  man  from  the  first  for  the 
true  aspect  of  the  world  which  takes  the 
things  as  they  really  are  in  their  highest 
import  and  not  as  they  appear  in  the 
system  of  causes  and  effects. 

To  be  trained  to  the  understanding  of 
this  highest  truth  it  is  not  necessary  to 
learn  anything  by  heart  or  to  make  experi- 
ments ;  and  yet  serious  and  severe  training 
is  required.  We  have  said  that  to  under- 
stand anything  as  it  is  in  itself,  we  must 
be  able  to  abstract  it  from  all  its  connec- 
tions ;  the  one  power  of  the  mind  which 
we  ought  to  train  is  thus  the  power  of 
abstraction,  of  isolation,  the  power  which 
suppresses  the  thought  of  everything  which 
lies  outside  of  the  object  and  inhibits  every 
desire  which  is  not  satisfied  by  the  object 
in  its  immediate  presentation.  From  this 
point  of  view,  it  is  immaterial  whether  the 
beauty  appears  in  nature  and  life  or  in  the 
rendering  of  the  artist  and  poet.  The 
landscape  which  the  painter  gives  us  on 
the  canvas  is  separated  from  the  world  by 
its  frame,  the  roads  in  that  landscape  do 
not  lead  anywhere  outside  of  the  frame 


Principles  of  Art  Education        33 

and  there  are  no  people  behind  those  hills ; 
if  we  begin  to  connect  it  with  anything 
outside  of  itself,  it  becomes  merely  a  geo- 
graphical illustration,  and  thus  a  part  of 
science.  But  the  beautiful  sunset  there 
over  the  ocean  in  real  nature  is  not  less 
separated  from  the  world,  and,  if  we  con- 
nect it  with  that  which  was  before  and 
with  that  which  will  follow,  it  becomes 
astronomical  knowledge  and  the  restful 
absorption  of  our  mind  is  gone.  This  sup- 
pression of  the  thought  of  where  the  road 
is  leading  needs  more  careful  preparation 
and  more  insistent  training  than  the  stimu- 
lation of  such  inquiries,  which  must  be 
brought  into  the  service  of  knowledge. 
To  see  the  marble  statue  but  not  to  ask  for 
the  color  of  the  living  being,  to  see  the 
bust  and  not  to  ask  for  the  arms  and  legs, 
to  hear  the  poem  and  not  to  ask  to  whom 
the  poet  addresses  it,  to  read  the  drama 
and  not  to  inquire  what  will  happen  after 
the  last  act,  is  possible  only  if  the  scientific 
attitude  with  its  desire  for  connection  is 
suppressed  and  the  attitude  of  satisfaction 
in  the  isolated  object  is  developed.  Art 
instruction  in  the  school  is  the  great  social 
scheme  which  the  community  has  at  its 


34         Principles  of  Art  Education 

disposal  to  train  this  power;  that  is,  to 
open  the  mind  for  that  truth  which  is  more 
complete  in  itself  than  the  truth  of  scien- 
tific knowledge,  for  that  truth  which 
understands  the  immediate  reality  of  the 
objects. 

With  the  clear  insight  into  the  rdle 
which  the  artistic  rendering  of  reality 
plays  in  the  world  of  human  interests,  the 
philosophy  of  art  has  reached  the  point 
where  it  goes  over  into  special  aesthetics. 
Philosophy,  to  condense  all  into  one 
phrase,  has  shown  that  all  scientific  knowl- 
edge leads  us  away  from  the  real  object, 
giving  us  merely  its  connections ;  that  if 
we  want  the  real  object,  we  must  separate 
it  from  all  its  connections,  must  grasp  it 
in  its  complete  isolation ,  and  that  it  is  the 
function  of  art  to  bring  about  this  isolation 
and  to  show  us  the  object  in  its  immediate 
truth.  ^Esthetics  has  now  to  show  us  by 
what  steps  and  schemes  the  different  arts 
can  fulfil  that  end  of  bringing  about  the 
complete  isolation  of  the  things  in  this 
world  so  that  our  mind  finds  rest  in  their 
presentation. 


PART  TWO—  ^ESTHETICAL 


IHILOSOPHY  shows  us  the 
general  principle  of  art;  aesthet- 
ics develops  the  consequences 
of  that  principle  for  the  differ- 
ent spheres  of  beauty.  Philosophy  says 
that  it  is  a  function  of  art  to  make  us  under- 
stand the  world  we  live  in  in  its  true  reality 
by  impressing  us  with  the  facts  of  the 
world  as  they  are  in  themselves,  holding 
oui  mind  to  the  one  experience  by  isolat- 
ing it  from  the  remainder  of  the  universe. 
Esthetics  must  show  us  how  this  demand 
for  isolation  can  be  fulfilled,  what  rules 
have  to  be  obeyed,  what  methods  of  render- 
ing are  available,  what  transformations 
become  necessary  to  succeed  in  such  a  com- 
plete separation  so  that  our  mind  can  be 
given  over  to  the  one  bit  of  experience 
without  wandering  to  anything  else.  Yes, 
transformations  are  necessary ;  the  object, 
as  nature  offers  it,  cannot  fulfil  the  demand, 


86         Principles  of  Art  Education 

or  at  least  can  fulfil  it  only  in  those  excep- 
tional thrills  of  life  where  we  sink  our 
whole  mind  into  the  enjoyment  of  natural 
beauty.  But  even  in  such  cases,  the  de- 
mands of  life  and  the  demands  of  knowl- 
edge in  the  service  of  life  speak  to  us  all 
the  time  ;  we  may  enjoy  a  beautiful  land- 
scape, and  yet,  if  we  want  to  live  in  it, 
quite  other  questions  than  those  of  the 
impression  approach  us ;  we  may  be  fas- 
cinated by  a  human  figure,  but  if  we  have 
to  deal  with  the  man,  he  cannot  remain 
for  us  an  isolated  piece  of  reality,  he  is 
connected  with  a  thousand  other  experi- 
ences ;  and  if  we  hear  beautiful  words 
spoken  to  us,  we  cannot  isolate  them,  we 
cannot  fully  give  our  mind  to  them  alone ; 
they  seek  an  answer  and  they  turn  to 
action.  The  beauty  of  men  and  of  things 
in  life  remains  thus  only  a  passing  pulse- 
beat  of  experience;  we  cannot  hold  our 
mind  to  one  object  because  life  pushes  us 
forward  and  demands  from  us  the  attitude 
of  knowing  without  a  chance  to  find  repose 
and  quietude.  To  cut  the  single  experi- 
ence really  away  from  everything  else  it 
must  be  transformed,  and  that  transforma- 
tion is  the  mission  of  art. 


Principles  of  Art  Education        37 

We  cannot  follow  here  the  aesthetics 
of  music  or  of  poetry,  and  yet  the 
poet,  too,  has  to  transform  life  while  he 
encloses  it  into  his  novel,  his  poem,  his 
drama,  and  isolates  the  personalities  and 
their  actions  from  the  historical  world  in 
which  we  live.  We  are  here  concerned 
merely  with  the  arts  of  design,  and,  again, 
especially  with  pictorial  design.  All  pic- 
torial art  begins  with  the  separation  of  the 
things  from  the  sphere  of  our  practical 
activity  by  bringing  the  objects  into  the  two- 
dimensional  plane,  while  we  and  all  our 
practical  objects  exist  in  the  third  dimen- 
sion. The  still-life  painting  of  fruits  may 
bring  out  every  feature  of  the  grapes  and 
apples,  and  yet,  by  their  being  projected 
into  the  two-dimensional  plane,  there  is  no 
fear  that  we  shall  connect  them  with  those 
effects  which  we  connect  in  our  mind  with 
real  fruit ;  that  is,  there  is  no  fear  that  we 
shall  desire  to  use  them  for  the  satisfaction 
of  our  appetite ;  we  do  not  long  to  eat 
them,  we  shall  merely  contemplate  them. 
And  the  room  in  the  painting  may  be  most 
skilfully  painted,  and  yet  there  is  no  chair 
on  which  we  want  to  sit ;  and  the  portrait 
may  be  most  true  to  life,  and  yet  we  do 


38         Principles  of  Art  Education 

not  think  of  asking  the  man  in  it  for  a  talk 
or  a  walk.  The  projection  into  the  plane 
has  cut  off  all  the  connections  between  the 
object  and  the  practical  causes  and  effects : 
thus  deception  is  clearly  not  the  ideal  of 
the  painter,  he  ought  not  to  give  us  the 
beliei  that  the  object  is  the  true  object  of 
practical  life.  The  illusion  of  practical 
reality  is  a  pseudo-art;  the  artist  has  a 
higher  aim.  Of  course,  projection  into  the 
plane  is  not  the  only  method  by  which 
objects  can  be  separated  from  practical 
affairs.  The  sculptor,  for  instance,  leaves 
the  human  beings  or  the  animals  in  three 
dimensions,  but  as  a  compensation  he 
changes  the  color,  gives  us  the  man  in 
white  marble  or  brown  bronze,  and  thus 
excludes  the  possibility  of  taking  the  repro- 
duction for  a  real  object  of  life.  It  belongs 
to  the  vulgar  circles  below  the  level  of  art 
to  exhibit  colored  wax  figures  which  give 
us  the  illusion  from  which  effects  can  be 
expected.  If  real  art  desires  to  give  color 
to  plastic  objects,  the  size  of  these  objects 
must  be  so  much  below  or  above  life-size 
that  no  illusion  can  enter. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  the  trans- 
formation  into  the  practically  impossible 


Principles  of  Art  Education         39 

color  effect  of  the  marble  statue  or  into  the 
practically  impossible  space  effect  of  the 
plane  picture  has  been  made,  every  object 
of  reality,  and  not  the  beautiful  thing  only, 
may  be  welcome  material  for  the  artist. 
In  life  only  that  object  which  was  beautiful 
for  us,  through  its  own  qualities,  had  the 
power  to  exclude  for  a  while  our  thought 
of  its  connections  with  other  objects  and 
effects,  and  we  had  to  call  indifferent  or 
ugly  that  thing  which  lacked  this  power 
and  which  thus  had  meaning  for  us  merely 
as  something  to  be  used,  to  be  changed,  to 
be  developed,  and  thus  merely  as  foothold 
for  our  thought  of  connection.  As  soon 
as  the  artist  finds  a  way  to  separate  such 
a  non-beautiful  object  by  his  technical 
means,  —  for  instance,  by  rendering  his 
idea  of  it  in  marble  or  projecting  it  on  the 
canvas,  —  and  yet  to  interest  us  in  the  thing, 
then  he  does  not  need  any  longer  the 
natural  beauty  of  the  model,  and  can  make 
the  portrait  of  the  ugliest  man  a  most 
beautiful  work  of  art.  Thus,  neither  that 
kind  of  realism  which  seeks  the  end  in  the 
most  exact  copying  of  nature  with  the 
possible  effect  of  an  illusion  of  reality,  nor 
that  kind  of  idealism  which  believes  that 


40         Principles  of  Art  Education 

it  can  use  beautiful  objects  alone  as 
material  for  art,  can  be  justified  by  serious 
aesthetics.  The  work  of  art  must  be 
different  from  the  real  object  of  practical 
life,  because  only  then  it  isolates  its  sub- 
ject from  the  practical  demands  and  effects, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  this 
separation  is  effected,  any  object,  even  the 
ugly  one,  can  be  the  subject  of  the  highest 
art. 

We  may,  in  the  following,  concentrate 
our  interest  on  that  special  type  of  design 
that  is  concerned  with  the  pictorial  render- 
ing of  the  world.  Each  complete  picture 
involves  two  essential  factors:  it  shows  us, 
firstly,  a  content,  and  secondly,  a  filling  of 
space.  Both  together  must  form  a  unity. 
It  is  almost  an  artificial  abstraction  to  con- 
sider one  independently  of  the  other ;  and 
yet  the  two  aspects  must  be  at  first  sep- 
arated, the  more  as  we  shall  find  artistic 
products  in  which  the  one  factor  is  realized 
without  the  other.  We  said  that  the 
picture  involves  the  filling  of  a  space ;  this 
filling  is  a  filling  by  lights  which  are  dif- 
ferent in  their  sizes,  their  shapes,  their 
colors,  their  values,  their  intensities,  and, 
as  these  lights  are  beside  each  other,  their 


Principles  of  Art  Education        41 

differences  must  lead  to  forms,  and  the 
outlines  of  these  forms  constitute  the  lines 
which  divide  the  space  of  the  whole  picture 
into  smaller  spaces.  Such  a  filling  of  the 
space  by  lines,  straight  or  curved,  and  lights, 
is  not  in  itself  a  complete  picture ;  never- 
theless, it  may  be  so  arranged  that  it  holds 
the  mind  in  itself  and  separates  itself  thus 
from  everything  else  and  becomes  a  beau- 
tiful work  of  art.  It  is  then  a  true  orna- 
ment which  satisfies  the  first  requirement 
of  a  good  picture,  presenting  a  good 
design  ;  or,  if  it  connects  itself  with  objects 
of  practical  use,  it  may  enter  into  the  pur- 
pose of  architecture  or  of  industrial  arts 
and  crafts.  On  the  other  hand,  it  becomes 
a  pictorial  design  only  if  those  lights  and 
lines  not  only  fill  the  space  in  a  beautiful 
way,  but  express  a  content,  perhaps  a 
flower  or  a  whole  landscape,  a  single  face 
or  a  whole  historic  scene. 

To  be  sure,  the  form  of  the  design  has 
its  content  too ;  it  has  as  content  the  ex- 
pression of  certain  spaces  and  the  expres- 
sion of  certain  colors,  and  we  shall  do  full 
justice  to  this  truth  ;  and  yet  it  is  clear 
that  in  a  picture  in  which  the  filling  of  the 
space  represents  a  landscape  or  a  portrait, 


42        Principles  of  Art  Education 

the  space-divisions  and  colors  subordinate 
themselves  to  the  subject  and  become  a 
mere  form  of  the  content,  while  they  may 
themselves  play  the  r61e  of  content  in  the 
design.  The  form  of  the  picture  is  thus 
its  distribution  of  lights  and  lines  which 
fill  the  space,  and  its  content  is  the  subject 
which  is  expressed  by  such  filling  if  the 
picture  is  to  live  up  to  the  demands  of 
beauty.  A  complete  isolation  must  be 
reached  in  both  instances :  the  space  with 
its  filling  must  separate  itself  from  all  the 
other  spaces  in  the  world,  and  the  content 
which  expresses  itself  must  stand  there 
isolated,  cut  off  from  everything  else  in 
experience.  The  picture  will  be  perfect  if 
both  factors  support  each  other  so  fully 
that  the  character  of  the  filling  aids  in  the 
isolation  of  the  space  —  in  short,  that  form 
and  content  demand  each  other  for  the  ful- 
filment of  complete  isolation.  It  must  be 
our  purpose  to  consider  the  two  factors  at 
first  separately  and  then  in  their  combina- 
tion ;  we  have  thus  to  ask  at  first  how 
pictorial  design  succeeds  in  isolating  an 
experience ;  then,  how  pictorial  design  can 
isolate  the  filling  of  the  space  ;  and,  finally, 
how  both  factors  have  to  cooperate. 


Principles  of  Art  Education         43 

We  abstract  thus  at  first  from  the  form 
and  ask  merely  what  is  the  experience,  the 
content  which  the  artist  shows  us.  If  we 
wander  through  the  rooms  of  a  gallery,  we 
learn  quickly  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  of  perception  which  may  not  become 
his  prey,  the  smallest  and  the  largest,  the 
funny  and  the  pathetic,  the  simple  and  the 
complex.  The  light  of  a  candle  in  a  small 
shabby  room  and  a  brilliant  sunset  over 
glorious  landscape,  a  simple  peasant  at  his 
labor  and  a  world's  hero  on  the  battle-field, 
a  simple  flower  and  the  gigantic  ocean,  all 
speak  to  us  from  the  canvas  of  the  painter. 
What  is  then  the  content  of  the  pictorial 
presentation?  The  first  most  natural,  most 
usual,  but,  as  we  must  add,  most  superficial 
answer  is  that  the  artist  shows  us  a  thing 
or  a  group  of  things.  But  here,  too,  our 
philosophical  insight  must  help  us  to  avoid 
a  serious  mistake.  Bold  as  it  may  sound 
at  first,  we  must  insist  that  it  is  never  the 
part  of  the  artist  to  give  us  things,  to  show 
us  objects.  What  do  we  mean  by  a  thing, 
by  an  object?  A  feeling,  an  emotion,  a 
will,  a  doubt,  is  never  a  thing ;  also,  in  the 
outer  world,  we  do  not  call  a  thing  that 
which  gives  out  all  its  existence  in  the  act 


44         Principles  of  Art  Education 

in  which  it  presents  itself;  the  tone  we 
hear  is  not  a  thing,  the  flavor  we  taste  is 
not  a  thing,  the  movement  we  see  is  not  a 
thing.  That  movement,  that  flavor,  that 
tone  may  result  from  things,  may  belong 
to  things,  but  in  themselves  they  are  offer- 
ings of  reality  which  are  not  things,  as 
they  do  not  last,  as  they  cannot  be  found 
again  in  a  new  act  of  experience.  If  a  bird 
sings  its  melody  twice,  it  remains  the  same 
bird,  but  its  second  song  is  not  the  same 
song  that  the  first  was ;  it  may  be  exactly 
like  it,  but  it  is  a  new  part  of  reality. 
The  bird  is  thus  an  object,  its  song  is 
merely  an  action  which  is  new  every  time  it 
is  repeated.  We  speak  of  objects,  of  things, 
merely  when  we  mean  that  that  which 
we  perceive  lasts  beyond  our  perception  as 
something  which  has  continuity  and  can  be 
found  again.  It  may  have  changed  its 
forms,  its  appearance  may  have  become 
different,  but  all  those  changes  are  still 
merely  movements  of  its  parts ;  the  object 
itself  remains  and  its  substance  goes  over 
from  the  present  to  the  future  experience. 
But  as  soon  as  we  understand  that  the 
conception  of  the  thing,  yes,  that  every 
idea  of  an  object  involves  this  thought  of 


Principles  of  Art  Education         45 

continuity,  we  must  see  clearly  that  it  is 
utterly  contradictory  to  the  meaning  of 
art.  Continuity  demands  the  connection 
of  the  present  experience  with  a  possible 
experience  of  the  past  or  of  the  future ; 
that  is,  it  demands  a  connection  with 
something  which  is  not  given  to  us  in  our 
present  experience  ;  but  it  is  just  the  sup- 
pression of  every  connection  which  we 
recognize  as  the  first  condition  of  art. 
Every  connection,  we  have  seen,  belongs 
to  our  practical  knowledge ;  the  concep- 
tion of  a  thing  thus  has  a  meaning  merely 
for  the  world  of  practical  activity;  it 
expresses  our  confidence  that  the  object 
towards  which  we  act  will  have  its  effect 
in  the  future.  Even  the  most  elementary 
idea  of  a  thing  thus  tends,  in  principle,  in 
the  direction  of  scientific  knowledge. 

If  the  artist  really  seeks  isolation,  he 
must  understand  that  the  reality  he  pre- 
sents is  never  to  be  considered  from  the 
point  of  view  of  its  possible  connection 
with  future  experiences,  of  its  possible  per- 
sistence beyond  the  present  stage ;  in  short, 
that  it  is  not  with  a  group  of  things  that 
he  has  to  do.  That  which  the  artist  shows 
is  thus  never  the  object  which  natural 


46         Principles  of  Art  Education 

science  describes.  There  is  not  the  slight- 
est anatomical  difficulty  in  the  fact  that 
the  body  in  the  portrait  picture  ends  per- 
haps in  the  middle  of  the  chest,  and  no 
botanical  difficulty  in  allowing  the  branches 
of  the  tree  to  which  no  trunk  belongs  to 
hang  over  into  the  landscape,  and  no  phy- 
sical difficulty  in  seeing  on  the  ocean,  for 
any  length  of  contemplation,  the  wave 
which  in  nature  disappears  at  once.  All 
those  naturalistic  facts  refer  to  objects; 
the  artist's  presentation  comes  not  as  an 
information  about  nature,  but  as  a  chal- 
lenge to  understand  and  to  appreciate  the 
immediate  reality.  The  content  of  the 
picture  offers  itself  more  like  an  activity, 
and  yet  even  the  idea  of  an  activity  refers 
us  too  strongly  to  the  idea  of  the  thing 
which  makes  the  activity.  Let  us  say, 
rather,  that  it  is  a  demand,  a  claim,  a  sug- 
gestion. The  content  of  the  picture  does 
not  say,  I  am  such  and  such  a  thing,  it 
says,  understand  me. 

But  if  the  content  of  the  picture  is  not 
a  thing  or  group  of  things,  our  difficulty 
seems  to  have  become  still  greater.  How 
can  the  artist  now  hope  for  that  isolation 
which  we  demanded?  A  thing  presents 


Principles  of  Art  Education         47 

itself  through  the  continuous  connection 
of  its  parts,  somewhat  as  a  unity  in  nature, 
and  is  thus  isolated  from  all  other  things ; 
if  the  artist  relinquishes  this  most  natural 
opportunity  to  isolate  the  content  of  his 
offering,  how  can  he  succeed  in  separating 
for  our  mind  his  subject  from  the  remainder 
of  the  universe  ?  Only  one  way  is  open  to 
him :  instead  of  the  unity  of  the  object,  he 
must  give  us  the  unity  of  its  meaning; 
that  is,  instead  of  that  unity  which  results 
in  a  scientific  connection  of  the  object  with 
its  past  and  its  future,  he  must  impress  on 
us  a  unity  by  a  meaning  which  holds  to- 
gether the  manifoldness  of  the  immediate 
present  experience  in  our  own  conscious- 
ness. As  long  as  an  impression  has  no 
meaning  for  us,  we  cannot  decide  whether 
its  parts  belong  together  or  are  parts  of 
very  different  things ;  we  need  the  knowl- 
edge of  natural  science,  we  need  the  refer- 
ences to  the  behavior  of  those  parts  in 
their  mutual  relation  in  the  future  and  in 
the  past,  to  find  out  whether  they  are  one 
thing  or  not — whether  the  bird  on  the 
tree,  for  instance,  belongs  to  the  tree  like 
its  fruit  or  is  a  thing  for  itself.  The  variety 
of  present  impressions  can,  therefore,  have 


48         Principles  of  Art  Education 

a  unity,  if  we  take  it  without  reference  to 
future  and  past  connections,  only  if  it  has 
a  unity  of  meaning ;  and  this  meaning  it  is 
which  the  content  of  the  picture  demands 
to  have  understood.  The  word  meaning 
must  certainly  not  be  understood  to  refer 
to  an  abstract  idea,  a  logical  thought  or  a 
moral  doctrine.  The  painting  has  not  to 
teach  us  anything,  it  has  not  to  preach  and 
not  to  inform  us  —  it  has  merely  to  express 
that  piece  of  the  world  which  it  shows  us  ; 
but  to  express  it,  it  must  show  us  a  mean- 
ing, it  must  represent  to  us  something  of 
objective  reality,  and  just  in  so  doing  does 
it  become  more  than  an  abstract  design, 
more  than  an  ornamental  combination  of 
colors  and  figures. 

But  another  misinterpretation  is  conceiv- 
able. The  meaning,  you  might  say,  is  not 
in  the  impression  itself  but  in  the  subject 
who  sees  it;  it  is  an  association  in  our 
mind,  but  not  a  quality  in  the  perceived 
object.  I  see  the  sword ;  if  it  means  for 
me  fight,  it  is  my  own  association  which 
suggests  that  meaning,  and,  moreover,  such 
association  in  me  is  the  product  of  my 
past  experiences.  I  have  seen  the  fighting 
use  of  the  sword,  I  know  its  bloody  effects, 


Principles  of  Art  Education        49 

all  my  knowledge  and  experiences  are  re- 
produced and  condensed  in  that  interpreta- 
tion of  the  sword  in  the  picture  ;  it  is  just 
the  connection  of  the  present  experience 
with  earlier  ones  which  allows  a  psycho- 
logical explanation  of  this  meaning,  and 
thus  the  aesthetic  process,  when  it  involves 
a  meaning,  seems  to  demand  a  connection 
after  all.  But  there  is  no  contradiction 
here.  As  soon  as  we  want  to  explain 
the  meaning  of  a  work  of  art  psychologi- 
cally, we  must  indeed  consider  it  as  an 
associative  idea  in  us  and  must  connect  it 
with  the  past,  but  psychological  explana- 
tion of  an  aesthetic  act  is  not  itself  an 
aesthetic  act ;  psychological  explanation  is, 
like  every  explanation,  a  scientific  activity 
and  is  thus,  like  every  science,  based  on 
connection.  This  psychological  explana- 
tion, however,  does  not  here  come  in  ques- 
tion for  us  at  all ;  it  will  interest  us  when 
we  have  to  do  with  the  psychology  of  our 
subject,  but  we  are  dealing  here  with  its 
aesthetics.  We  do  not  want  to  give  here  a 
causal  explanation  of  the  process,  but  we 
seek  an  understanding  of  the  factors  which 
we  experience  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  work 
of  art.  In  our  immediate  contemplation 


50         Principles  of  Art  Education 

of  the  beautiful  picture,  the  meaning  is 
certainly  something  belonging  to  the  pic- 
ture itself;  we  do  not  feel  ourselves  to 
have  from  the  canvas  an  optical  impression 
only,  which  secondarily  awakes  a  reproduc- 
tive idea  in  our  mind,  but  the  impression 
and  its  meaning  are  one  unity.  And  as 
there  is  no  reference  to  our  associative 
imagination  involved,  there  is  also  no  refer- 
ence to  the  past.  If  the  face  of  one  portrait 
expresses  to  us  peaceful  serenity  and  that 
of  another  cleverness  or  insincerity,  it  may 
be  that  the  psychologist  may  explain  that 
fact  as  the  after-effect  of  our  earlier  observa- 
tions and  experiences ;  but  in  our  aesthetic 
appreciation  there  lies  no  conscious  memory 
of  other  men  with  similar  features ;  no, 
the  faces  which  we  see  here  and  now  in  the 
frames  are  alone  before  our  mind  and  have 
this  meaning  in  themselves. 

This  meaning,  we  said,  furnishes  the 
unity  of  the  content,  for  which,  as  we  saw, 
the  natural  scientific  unity  of  the  object  as 
a  thing  cannot  be  substituted.  This  unity 
of  meaning,  on  the  other  hand,  isolates  the 
content  completely ;  everything  which  is 
necessary  for  the  expression  of  the  mean- 
ing belongs  to  the  content,  everything 


Principles  of  Art  Education         51 

which  is  superfluous  or  external  to  the 
meaning  is  an  element  of  disturbance,  and 
the  content  is  thus  sharply  separated  from 
the  rest  of  the  world.  There  cannot  be  a 
sixth  act  to  the  perfect  tragedy  which  has 
fully  expressed  the  meaning  of  the  struggle 
of  that  one  life,  and  nothing  can  be  added 
to  the  perfect  landscape  painting.  We 
understand  now  why  we  cannot  have  a 
picture  of  a  part  which  has  no  meaning  for 
itself ;  the  leg  of  a  chair,  one  leaf  of  a  tree, 
the  tail  of  a  dog,  and  the  nose  of  a  man 
are  no  possible  contents  of  a  picture.  The 
anatomist  may  draw  the  nose  most  exactly 
and  skilfully ;  it  remains  a  piece  of  infor- 
mation, valuable  merely  for  the  purposes 
of  connection ;  taken  in  isolation,  as  the 
artist  must  take  it,  it  has  no  meaning  with- 
out the  other  parts  of  the  face,  while  the 
head  alone,  without  arms  and  legs,  gives  a 
complete  picture  as  it  has  a  complete 
meaning.  The  botanist  may  draw  the 
smallest  part  of  the  flower  with  the  same 
interest  as  the  whole  flower ;  the  artist  has 
no  use  for  such  a  part. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  unity  and 
isolation  lies  in  the  meaning  and  not  in  the 
scientific  unity  of  naturalistic  connection 


52         Principles  of  Art  Education 

of  the  parts,  then  it  is  clear  that  the  whole 
landscape  has  exactly  the  same  unity  as 
the  one  tree,  and  the  whole  historic  scene 
has  the  same  unity  as  the  one  figure. 
That  scene  does  not  contain  a  multitude  of 
single  contents  ;  as  the  face  is  not  a  bundle 
of  features  but,  through  its  expression, 
one  realization  of  life,  so  the  scene  is  not  a 
bundle  of  men,  but  the  whole  crowd  is 
one  pulse-beat  of  reality  with  one  meaning, 
while  the  meaning  of  the  whole  is  not 
expressed  in  any  one  of  the  parts,  and  can 
never  be  grasped  if  it  is  taken  as  the  sum 
of  the  meanings  of  the  parts.  Now  we 
understand  quite  well  that  the  isolated 
content  of  the  picture  may  contain  ele- 
ments which,  from  a  standpoint  of  natural 
history,  cannot  be  considered  at  all  in  such 
separation.  The  landscape  shows  us  there 
in  the  foreground  some  branches  of  trees 
whose  trunks  do  not  exist ;  in  the  middle 
ground  is  a  stream  which  has  no  source; 
in  the  background  a  church  tower  which 
has  no  base  ;  and  yet  they  are,  in  the  frame 
of  this  picture,  not  parts  which  demand 
the  other  parts  of  the  church,  of  the 
stream,  of  the  tree  for  a  logical  supple- 
ment —  they  are  not  parts  at  all ;  they  are 


Principles  of  Art  Education        53 

all  together  inseparable  features  of  one 
unity  which  brings  before  us  the  peace  of 
the  autumn,  and,  while  the  other  parts 
belong  to  it  for  the  botanist,  for  the  geog- 
rapher, for  the  architect,  they  do  not  belong 
to  it  for  the  painter  who  does  not  seek 
knowledge  of  natural  history.  And  as  he 
has  not  to  seek  it,  he  may  not  only  abstract 
from  it  and  eliminate  the  superfluous  feat- 
ures, but  he  may  just  as  well  add  to  it  what- 
ever is  fit  to  bring  out  fully  the  meaning 
of  the  content.  If  it  fulfils  the  meaning 
more  intensely,  he  may  give  wings  to  the 
shoulders  of  men,  may  give  a  luminous 
halo  around  the  head,  may  put  a  man's 
trunk  on  the  body  of  a  horse,  and  may  give 
to  the  mermaid  a  fish's  tail.  He  may  add 
anything,  whatever  natural  science  may 
say,  with  the  exception  of  that  which  is 
superfluous  for  the  meaning  or  which 
antagonizes  the  expression  of  the  meaning. 
It  must  be,  then,  the  first  and  principal 
task  of  art  instruction  to  train  the  child  in 
this  direction.  The  child  must  learn  to 
render  an  experience  with  pencil  or  brush 
in  such  a  way  that  it  expresses  its  meaning 
completely ;  he  must  thus  learn  to  discrim- 
inate between  an  accurate  reproduction 


54         Principles  of  Art  Education 

which  gives  us  information  about  the  thing 
or  groups  of  things  or  part  of  a  thing,  and 
an  artistic  presentation  which  is  the  realiza- 
tion of  a  meaning.  The  child  must  learn 
that  many  features  of  the  object  must  be 
omitted  in  the  artistic  reproduction, 
because  they  are  not  characteristic  for  the 
whole,  and  that  others  must  be  readjusted 
or  reinforced,  because  the  meaning  of  the 
whole  is  centred  in  them.  From  the 
standpoint  of  knowledge  everything  which 
can  be  discriminated  is  equally  important 
for  the  accurate  reproduction ;  the  child 
must  learn  to  see  the  characteristic  features, 
the  selection  of  which,  together  with  the 
elimination  of  the  less  characteristic  ones, 
makes  the  copy  less  correct  but  more  inter- 
nally true,  less  instructive  but  more  sug- 
gestive, less  helpful  for  natural  science  but 
more  helpful  for  general  education  and  for 
the  formation  of  a  happy  personality.  In 
the  lessons  in  botany,  zoology  and  physics 
the  child  ought  to  learn  to  make  the  most 
exact?  sketch  possible  of  the  living  and 
inanimate  things  in  nature ;  in  the  art  in- 
struction he  ought  to  learn  to  work  over 
such  sketches  till  merely  the  characteristic 
lines  and  shades  and  tones  are  brought  out 


Principles  of  Art  Education         55 

and  the  chair  or  the  fruit,  the  flower  or  the 
bird,  the  house  or  the  forest,  have  become 
merely  expressions  of  a  meaning  and  have 
thus  reached  a  complete  unity  in  which 
everything  is  necessary  for  the  whole  and 
nothing  which  is  necessary  is  absent. 
Then  alone  will  the  child  feel  a  perfect 
satisfaction  in  the  sketch ;  the  mind  will 
rest  in  it,  the  isolation  has  become  real. 
And  thus,  I  say,  give  the  child  aesthetically 
neutral  pictures  of  natural  objects,  flowers, 
animals,  household  things,  exact  copies 
without  any  aim  towards  beauty,  merely 
adapted  to  the  purposes  of  information, 
and  let  the  child  now  transform  them  into 
things  of  beauty  by  making  them  means  of 
expression  ;  show  him  how  to  look  out  for 
the  most  characteristic  lines  and  lights,  for 
the  most  expressive  features,  and  how  to 
reinforce  them  and  to  omit  the  inexpressive  ; 
how  external  features  may  be  added ;  how 
the  gracefulness  of  the  fine  flower  may  be 
brought  out  more  charmingly  by  putting  it 
into  a  graceful  vase ;  in  short,  show  the 
child  how  to  move  from  the  reproduction 
of  practical  life  to  a  rendering  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  true  expression  of  the  reality, 
of  meaning.  A  new  world  will  open  itself 


56         Principles  of  Art  Education 

to  the  young  susceptible  mind,  a  world  so 
often  closed  to  the  adult  man  who  has  not 
been  trained  for  the  perception  of  that  dif- 
ference by  early  guidance  and  surround- 
ings, and  to  whom  every  picture  thus 
remains  merely  a  graphic  description  of 
something  which  has  happened  in  practical 
life  or  which  exists  somewhere  in  nature — 
to  him  the  forests  always  remain  lumber 
and  Niagara  useful  water-power. 

But  we  insisted  from  the  first  that  the 
meaning  which  is  expressed  in  the  pictorial 
design  corresponds  only  to  one  aspect  and 
that  there  is  another  aspect  —  that  which 
refers  to  the  lights,  the  colors,  the  lines, 
the  figures,  the  spaces  by  which  the  mean- 
ing expresses  itself.  We  used  also  the 
usual  terms :  content  and  form.  They  fit 
our  purpose  perfectly  if  we  understand 
that  form  does  not  here  mean  space-form 
only,  but  all  the  external  means  of  expres- 
sion, light  and  dark,  light  and  shade,  as 
well  as  lines,  and  that  the  colors  are  thus 
not  content  but  form,  while  the  meaning 
alone  is  content.  This  formal  aspect  of 
the  pictorial  design  demands  a  separate 
consideration  and  its  importance  for  the 
work  of  beauty  must  also  become  familiar 


Principles  of  Art  Education        57 

to  the  child.  Of  course,  when  the  child 
trained  itself  in  the  expression  of  meaning 
by  sketching  a  flower  or  a  bird,  a  house  or 
a  tree,  lights  and  shades,  lines  and  spaces 
were  involved ;  but  their  relations  were 
not  considered  for  their  own  interest ;  they 
came  in  question  merely  as  means  of  sig- 
nification. Can  these  means  have  their 
own  beauty?  The  formal  means  of  the 
pictorial  art  are  confined  to  light  and 
space-forms  in  one  plane ;  the  space-forms 
of  the  third  dimension,  which  the  sculptor 
needs,  are  unknown  to  it,  and  still  more  so 
are  the  time-forms  and  the  sounds  of  music 
and  poetry.  The  pictorial  presentation 
has  no  temporal  form,  it  is  as  such  not  in 
time.  Can  we  have  thus  a  beauty  of  light 
and  space-form?  Certainly.  We  have 
said  before  that  an  ornamental  design 
offers  nothing  but  that  kind  of  beauty. 
And  also  the  condition  under  which  their 
appearance  will  be  aesthetically  valuable, 
we  know  beforehand ;  it  is  given  as  soon 
as  they  exist  completed  in  themselves,  as 
soon  as  they  are  isolated  without  sugges- 
tions for  anything  else.  But  the  problem 
arises  at  once :  how  can  lines  or  lights  in 
themselves  be  isolated?  A  line  can  be 


58         Principles  of  Art  Education 

prolonged  without  end,  one  space-form  can 
be  laid  by  another,  one  light  can  shine 
beside  another;  they  have  no  unity  in 
themselves. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  colored  light  as 
physical  ray,  the  curved  line  as  geometrical 
object,  have  no  limitations  in  themselves 
and  thus  no  unity,  no  isolation,  no  artistic 
possibility.  But  forms  and  lights,  too,  can 
have  their  objective  meaning  whose  expres- 
sion demands  limitation  and  selection  and 
whose  completeness  gives  us  unity  indeed. 
What  do  they  mean  to  us  ?  The  answer 
is :  movement  and  excitement.  Move- 
ment !  Not  the  space-form  as  part  of  the 
space  means  movement;  space,  as  such, 
means  to  us  only  a  mere  possibility,  the 
possibility  of  filling  it  with  visual  impres- 
sions. The  space,  as  such,  is  therefore 
aesthetically  indifferent;  but  the  limited 
space,  the  special  space-form,  takes  the 
characteristics  of  its  limiting  lines.  It  is 
space  determined  and  embraced  by  certain 
lines  which  stand  in  certain  relations — 
and  these  lines  and  their  relations  mean 
movements  and  tensions.  Follow  with  an 
open  mind  the  play  of  lines  in  any  orna- 
ment, and  you  feel  how  these  movements, 


Principles  of  Art  Education        59 

these  impulses  and  tendencies,  speak  to 
you.  This  line  tries  to  lift  itself  up ;  this 
line,  with  its  noble  swing,  shows  you  its 
freedom ;  while  that,  with  its  forced  bend- 
ing, is  pressed  down ;  this  which  connects 
two  others  pulls  them  together,  and  that 
one  pushes  two  lines  to  their  distance; 
this  curve  returns  in  graceful  movement 
to  itself,  and  that  carries  you  away  with 
it;  this  moves  on  in  a  straight  impulse, 
and  that  plays  easily  in  its  wave  form ; 
this  closed  curve  presses  the  space  together, 
and  that  other  one  gives  you  the  freedom 
of  unlimited  space.  No  one  understands 
the  language  of  these  lines  better  than  the 
architect,  whose  work  gets  life  through 
the  movement  impulses  and  movement 
suggestions  of  the  parts.  The  column 
erects  itself  to  carry  the  burden  of  the 
masses,  the  tower  points  upwards,  the  hori- 
zontal masses  press  down  on  the  lower 
parts.  How  expressive  the  differences  be- 
tween the  pointed  arc  of  the  Gothic  win- 
dow and  the  half-circle  of  the  Romanic 
style ;  how  eloquent  the  difference  be- 
tween the  noble  lines  of  the  Renaissance 
palace  and  the  frivolous  play  of  the 
Rococo  lines! 


60         Principles  of  Art  Education 

And  now  the  child  must  learn  to  per- 
ceive and  to  understand  the  meaning  of 
lines  and  spaces  and  to  express  their  reality 
in  isolated  completeness.  Even  the  simplest 
form  may  represent  such  unity ;  the  simple 
circle  or  ellipse,  the  simple  division  of  the 
oblong  into  two  equal  halves,  may  appear 
as  a  complete  expression  in  which  nothing 
is  superfluous  and  to  which  nothing  has  to 
be  added,  and  the  child  must  now  learn 
how  this  self-centred  appearance  of  spaces 
and  curves  can  be  kept  up  with  growing 
complication,  by  which  the  meaning  be- 
comes richer  and  richer.  Now  the  lines 
are  no  longer  geometrical  lines  only,  they 
cannot  be  continued  any  more  without 
limit,  they  have  their  measure  in  them- 
selves, they  are  complete  as  soon  as  they 
express  their  meaning  fully.  The  grace- 
ful Rococo  curve  cannot  join  the  heavy 
classic  line,  for  the  meanings  of  those  two 
movements  contradict,  their  expression  can- 
not be  brought  into  unity,  they  cannot  be 
combined,  just  as  we  cannot  think  of  the 
pretty  little  shepherdess  of  the  Rococo 
pictures  in  the  pose  of  a  classical  goddess. 
Let  the  child  divide  the  simple  spaces 
into  unequal  parts,  which  are  yet  not 


Principles  of  Art  Education         61 

inharmonious ;  or  let  him  fill  the  space 
with  various  lines  whose  movement  tenden- 
cies balance,  so  that  neither  the  one  side  is 
pulled  down  nor  the  other  jumps  up,  but 
so  that  we  feel  the  harmony  of  those  bal- 
ancing powers.  Let  'the  child  find  out 
how  this  balance  is  changed  by  most  differ- 
ent influences,  how  the  long  and  the  short 
line,  the  concave  and  the  convex  line,  the 
heavy  and  the  light  line,  the  line  moving 
to  the  centre  and  that  moving  away  from 
the  centre,  have  most  different  influences 
on  this  balance ;  and  how  different  is  the 
play  of  these  movements  when  they  move 
about  a  vertical  or  about  a  horizontal  axis. 
The  children  must  really  feel  the  meaning 
of  these  variations. 

I  should  not  trouble  them  with  abstract 
formulas  which  prescribe,  for  instance,  that 
if  the  heavy  long  line  on  the  right  side  is 
so  far  from  the  centre,  the  light  short  line 
on  the  left  side  must  be  so  far  from  the 
centre  to  produce  a  balance  between  the  two 
movements  and  thus  a  unity  in  the  whole 
space  arrangement.  And  still  less  should 
I  rely  on  the  metaphors  which  are  to-day 
too  much  afloat  in  educational  art  circles. 
We  hear  that  a  short  line  far  from  the 


62         Principles  of  Art  Education 

centre  balances  a  longer  line  near  to  the 
centre,  according  to  the  mechanical  laws  of 
the  lever  which  demand  that  the  smaller 
weight  have  the  longer  arm  of  the  lever. 
Such  metaphors  may  be  convenient  if  the 
facts  chance  to  agree,  but  they  ought  never 
to  be  used  to  draw  conclusions  as  to  facts. 
The  small  weight  needs  always  the  longer 
arm  of  the  lever,  the  shorter  line  needs 
often  the  shorter  arm  of  the  lever  to  bal- 
ance the  longer  line,  and  the  metaphor  of 
the  weight  merely  stands  in  the  way  of  the 
right  apprehension  of  the  facts.  We  may 
say,  for  instance,  that  just  this  latter  case, 
in  which  the  short  line  must  be  nearer  to 
the  centre  than  the  balancing  long  vertical 
line,  is  always  given  when  the  centre  is 
determined  by  a  frame  around  the  whole 
field.  The  frame  accentuates  the  middle 
point,  energies  irradiate  from  the  centre 
and  give  increased  strength  to  the  move- 
ment impulses  of  those  lines  near  the 
centre.  The  result  is  that  the  lever  theory 
fits  merely  the  unframed  designs,  but  never 
a  framed  picture.  Whatever  is  constructed 
after  that  popular  lever  theory,  therefore, 
gives  the  impression  of  a  mere  pattern 
which  might  be  multiplied  without  end  on 


Principles  of  Art  Education         63 

a  wall  paper,  while  it  would  never  do  well 
for  a  well  composed  limited  painting. 
But  we  must  go  still  further;  the  child 
must  not  only  learn  to  bring  out  the  mean- 
ing of  the  space  and  of  the  lines,  but  must 
also  learn  to  subordinate  the  impression  of 
objects  to  these  space  relations.  Let  the 
child  take  the  pieture  of  a  flower  or  of  an 
animal  and  transform  it  as  a  merely  space 
filling  material.  At  first  the  child  learned 
how  to  bring  out  the  meaning  of  the  flower 
or  bird,  now  he  has  to  learn  to  abstract 
from  the  meaning  and  to  use  the  picture 
of  the  flower  or  bird  merely  as  a  means  to 
fill  the  space  so  that  the  lines  and  result- 
ing divisions  of  space  completely  express 
themselves  and  thus  form  a  unity,  which, 
as  such,  is  beautiful.  Now  the  flower  or 
the  animal  becomes  schematized,  perhaps 
quite  unlike  the  forms  of  nature,  but  care- 
fully adjusted  to  the  whole  given  space. 

But  the  lines  and  spaces  make  up  merely 
one  form  of  external  presentation.  We 
saw  that  the  light,  as  such,  with  its  values 
of  shades  and  with  its  manifoldness  of 
colors  is  in  volved  in  every  pictorial  pres- 
entation, too ;  it  also  speaks  to  us  with  its 
own  meaning.  If  we  see  a  white  snow 


64         Principles  of  Art  Education 

landscape  through  a  dark  gray  glass,  then 
through  a  red  glass,  and  finally  through  a 
blue  glass,  and  compare  the  impressions 
with  the  natural  one  in  full  sunlight,  the 
difference  between  light  and  dark,  between 
red  and  blue,  speaks  to  us  as  the  expression 
of  a  different  mood  or  different  key  in  the 
outer  world.  How  exciting  and  warm 
that  brilliant  red ;  how  cool  and  soft  and 
almost  depressing  that  mild  blue  !  Do  not 
let  us  think  here  of  a  symbolic  meaning  of 
the  colors ;  just  as  the  things  did  not  mean 
something  to  us  through  a  symbolic  refer- 
ence, but  merely  through  their  immediate 
presentation,  and  just  as  the  lines  were  not 
symbols  of  movement  but  carried  that 
movement  immediately  in  themselves,  so  it 
is  with  the  colors ;  we  do  not  say  that  green 
means  hope  and  yellow  means  envy,  we 
speak  here  merely  of  the  immediate  power  of 
the  color  itself —  the  meaning  of  the  color, 
which  must  have  a  chance  to  express  itself 
to  be  complete  and  thus  to  be  beautiful. 
As  long  as  one  color  only  is  given,  it  ex- 
presses itself  naturally  and  thus,  as  we  see, 
in  an  absolutely  dark  field  every  pure 
colored  light  gives  aesthetic  satisfaction. 
But  most  lights  are  mixed  ;  more  than  one 


Principles  of  Art  Education         65 

light  impression  enters  into  our  field  of 
vision,  and  the  meanings  may  contradict 
each  other ;  the  one  does  not  allow  the  full 
expression  of  the  other,  there  is  no  unity 
of  expression  in  their  combination ;  as  we 
say,  their  combination  is  ugly.  Let  the 
child  find  out  for  himself :  give  him  the 
training  in  the  appreciation  of  the  different 
colors  with  their  tints  and  shades,  with 
their  different  degrees  of  saturation.  Best 
of  all,  perhaps,  let  the  child  make  the  colors 
with  his  own  brush  from  a  few  simple 
colors ;  with  red  and  yellow  and  blue  every 
color  can  be  produced  and  the  more  the 
child  is  obliged  to  biing  out  the  color  by 
his  own  efforts  in  mixture  and  dilution, 
the  more  he  will  be  trained  to  give  full 
attention  to  the  characteristic  differences 
of  the  colors  and  their  moods-and  meaning. 
Then  let  him  combine  the  different  colors 
in  adjacent  spaces;  let  him  find  out  how 
the  meaning  of  these  lights  becomes  scat- 
tered and  contradictory  and  loses  unity  of 
expression  when  they  are  not  scaled  on  a 
fundamental  value  of  light  and  color  tone. 
Again,  I  should  say  that  the  child  must  be 
trained  to  subordinate  even  the  pictures  of 
objects  to  the  mere  ornamental  play  of 


66         Principles  of  Art  Education 

colored  lights ;  the  color  of  the  flower  has 
then  to  be  harmonized  with  the  color  of 
the  background  and  thus,  in  lines  and 
lights  equally,  the  child  must  learn  to  ex- 
press the  various  movements  of  forms  and 
of  lights  by  a  free  harmonization  of  all  the 
energies  involved. 

Only  one  step  more  remains  to  be  taken 
if  the  child  has  learned  to  express  the 
meaning  of  the  content  and  the  meaning 
of  the  lights  and  lines ;  he  enters  the  region 
of  real  art  when  he  learns  to  bring  out 
finally  the  highest  unity,  that  in  which  the 
content  and  form  themselves  demand  each 
other;  that  harmonization  in  which  the 
expression  of  the  content  is  reinforced  by 
the  form,  and  the  expression  of  the  lines 
and  of  the  lights  is  reinforced  by  the  con- 
tent. Every  true  picture  must  give  this 
harmony  of  expression,  this  completion 
through  which  the  picture  becomes  abso- 
lutely isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  world, 
giving  the  highest  repose  and  satisfaction 
in  such  a  perfect  harmony  of  all  its  mean- 
ings. The  first  step  thereto  is,  of  course, 
to  take  care  that  both  expression  and  form 
show  beauty.  A  well-drawn  head  may  be 
put  so  badly  into  its  space  that  the  portrait 


Principles  of  Art  Education        67 

as  a  whole  becomes  intolerable.  An  ex- 
pressive landscape  may  be  ruined  by  the 
color  of  the  sky  which  is  out  of  harmony 
with  the  color  of  the  foreground.  A  beau- 
tiful combination  of  lines  and  colors  may 
be  made  worthless  by  the  emptiness  of  the 
expression  in  the  chief  subject.  And  yet 
to  avoid  such  positive  blunders  in  the 
presentation  of  content,  space  and  light  is 
certainly  not  enough.  What  real  art  de- 
mands is  that  higher  stage  in  which  the 
special  expression  of  the  content  and  the 
special  choice  of  lines  and  colors  require 
each  other  to  fulfil  the  conditions  of  com- 
plete unity.  The  peaceful  idyllic  land- 
scape demands  mild  curves  and  soft  colors. 
It  might  be  quite  possible  to  give  to  every 
part  of  its  content  a  very  different  form ; 
the  branches  of  the  trees,  the  rocks  on  the 
pasture,  the  outlines  of  the  huts,  the  move- 
ments of  the  sheep  might  be  impressed  on 
us  in  acute  angles,  in  sharply  broken  lines, 
in  contrasting  loud  colors,  and  these  new 
angles  and  lines  and  colors  might  be  not 
less  beautiful  space-forms  and  combinations 
in  themselves,  and  yet  the  whole  harmony 
of  the  picture  would  be  destroyed.  These 
new  lines  and  lights  would  have  fitted  a 


68         Principles  of  Art  Education 

gigantic  mountain  scene  with  forests  in 
storm  and  with  men  in  excited  action,  but 
not  the  light  country  landscape  breathing 
quietude.  The  solemn  symmetrical  forms 
of  the  Madonna  picture  would  be  intolera- 
ble for  the  dramatic  action  of  an  historic 
scene.  If  a  picture  shows  a  woman  in  a 
room,  every  fold  of  her  dress,  every  line  of 
the  chair,  every  form  of  the  flowers  on  the 
table,  every  color  in  the  rug  and  curtain 
must  be  different  according  to  the  expres- 
sion of  her  face,  according  as  she  is  a  mild, 
sweet,  na'ive  woman  or  a  passionate  heroine ; 
and  if  her  eyes  tell  us  that  she  is  a  frivo- 
lous flirt,  every  ribbon  on  her  dress,  every 
stem  in  the  vase  of  flowers,  every  ornament 
on  the  wall  must  be  coquettish  with  her  in 
its  pretty  play  of  lines  and  colors. 

This  highest  aesthetic  fact  which  finds 
the  complete  unity  of  expressive  content 
and  expressive  form  cannot  be  reached  by 
the  average  draughtsman  without  long  and 
careful  training,  and  it  is  clear  that  he  will 
never  reach  it  by  his  own  efforts  only.  He 
must  come  in  contact  with  the  noblest 
work  of  real  art,  and  this  is  the  point 
where  the  serious  study  and  inspiring  in- 
terpretation of  works  of  art  must  play  its 


Principles  of  Art  Education         69 

part  in  the  aesthetic  school  of  instruction. 
Even  small  black  and  white  reproductions 
can  give  all  the  essentials  for  the  educative 
purposes  if  they  are  carefully  chosen  from 
the  most  excellent  productions  of  artistic 
genius,  presenting  a  large  variety  of  sub- 
jects and  a  full  variety  of  historic  styles, 
and  if,  above  all,  the  teacher  induces  an 
aesthetic  attitude  in  the  child ;  while  their 
effect  is  lost  if  he  encourages  the  logical 
attitude  of  curiosity  concerning  the  things 
or  scenes  presented ;  they  then  become 
mere  illustrations  without  aesthetic  value. 
The  child  must  learn  to  see  how  the  world 
can  be  expressed  with  the  naturalistic 
detail  of  the  realist  or  with  the  character- 
istic abbreviations  of  the  impressionist,  in 
classic  or  in  romantic  mood,  in  Italian  or 
in  Dutch  or  perhaps  in  Japanese  style,  and 
how  in  the  greatest  variety  of  subjects  and 
of  ways  of  treatment  the  true  work  of  art 
yet  reaches  a  complete  harmony  of  content 
and  form,  so  that  the  one  reinforces  the 
other,  and  so  that  content  and  form  to- 
gether produce  an  ultimate  isolation  of  the 
given  experience. 

The    pupil's    own    efforts    to    produce 
aesthetic     compositions     must     thus     be 


70         Principles  of  Art  Education 

supplemented  by  the  study  and  enjoyment 
of  masterpieces;  but  we  must  not  forget  that 
still  another  supplement  is  necessary.  The 
task  which  the  child  was  to  fulfil  demanded 
a  certain  amount  of  technical  skill  in  the 
handling  of  pencil  and  brush  and,  still 
more,  an  eye  trained  in  the  discrimination 
of  forms  and  colors  and  light  values. 
Special  instruction  in  careful  drawing  from 
copies  and  models  with  pencil,  charcoal 
and  brush  must  be  thus  an  additional  feat- 
ure of  the  instruction,  and  especially  the 
drawing  of  small  details  in  the  room  or  in 
the  landscape.  Not  seldom  the  natural 
science  lesson  will  give  a  good  opportunity 
to  develop  these  powers,  as  training  in 
observation,  skill  in  drawing,  and  exact- 
ness in  copying  will  be  the  more  readily 
reached  the  more  strongly  the  child  feels 
that  the  exact  rendering  of  the  botanical 
or  zoological  object,  and  not  the  produc- 
tion of  a  pretty  picture,  is  the  only  purpose 
of  his  effort.  If  the  training  in  exact  draw- 
ing is  brought  into  the  special  art  instruc- 
tion, the  exactness  easily  suffers  as  the 
beautifying  impulse  too  often  makes  beauty 
an  excuse  for  carelessness.  In  the  scien- 
tific lesson  such  fancies  of  the  imagination 


Principles  of  Art  Education         71 

less  easily  enter,  but  there  remains  the 
danger  that  the  science  teacher  is  unfa- 
miliar with  the  task  of  developing  those 
powers  in  the  child  when  they  are  defec- 
tive ;  thus,  practically,  the  drawing  of  "  de- 
tails "  in  the  art  lesson  is  the  best  method 
of  securing  exactness,  skill,  and  power  of 
observation. 

But  whether  we  consider  it  under  the 
title  of  art  instruction  or  under  the  title 
of  science  lesson,  the  chief  thing  remains 
that  such  a  training  of  eye  and  hand 
is  indeed  only  a  step  towards  art  instruc- 
tion, and  not  art  instruction  itself;  it  is 
preparatory  to  it,  but  no  more  than 
preparatory,  just  as  the  learning  to  read 
is  not  scientific  knowledge,  but  merely  a 
step  towards  its  acquirement.  The  child 
ought  to  get  a  fine  manual  training,  but  it 
is  absurd  to  speak  of  it  as  aesthetic  educa- 
tion if  this  training  is  considered  as  the 
principal,  or  perhaps,  the  only  end.  The 
child,  who,  with  a  few  clumsy  lines,  aims 
at  dividing  a  space  in  the  most  pleasing 
manner,  is  nearer  to  the  ideal  of  beauty 
than  the  other  child  who  is  able  to  copy 
most  exactly  and  in  all  its  details  a 
complicated  ornament.  While  there  is  no 


72         Principles  of  Art  Education 

lack  of  the  sure  eye  and  safe  hand  among 
this  people,  a  young  generation  which  feels 
the  meaning  of  beauty  to  the  bottom  of  its 
heart  is  the  great  need  of  our  community. 


PART  THREE— PSYCHOLOGICAL 


|  HE  teacher,  who  tries  conscien- 
tiously to  build  up  in  the  class- 
room the  sense  of  beauty,  is 
naturally  interested  in  the 
question:  What  goes  on  in  the  mind  of 
the  child ;  what  mental  factors  are  in- 
volved in  the  aesthetic  attitude ;  what  sub- 
jective conditions  are  necessary  for  the 
enjoyment  of  beauty?  Psychology  is 
the  science  which  describes  and  explains 
the  mental  processes ;  an  inquiry  into  the 
mental  processes  by  which  we  perceive  and 
produce  and  appreciate  works  of  art,  from 
the  simplest  drawing  to  the  masterpiece,  is 
thus  a  psychological  investigation.  If  we 
insist  on  calling  every  scientific  inquiry 
which  has  a  relation  to  art,  aesthetics,  then, 
of  course,  this  psychological  inquiry  also 
belongs  to  the  wide  field  of  aesthetics. 
But  it  is  more  correct  to  use  the  word  in 
a  narrower  sense,  and  to  call  only  that 


74         Principles  of  Art  Education 

part  of  science  aesthetics  which  asks  what 
the  characteristics  of  the  work  of  art  ought 
to  be,  and  to  take  the  descriptive  and  ex- 
planatory account  of  the  mental  processes 
in  the  production  and  enjoyment  of  art  as 
belonging  to  psychology.  ^Esthetics  gives 
rules,  prescriptions,  norms ;  psychology 
gives  mental  facts  and  their  causes.  The 
sesthetical  consideration  of  pictorial  art 
lies  behind  us;  before  us  is  the  difficult 
psychological  study. 

We  thus  turn  from  the  objective  work 
of  art  to  the  subjective  content  of  con- 
sciousness, from  the  objective  picture  to 
the  subjective  impression,  from  the  objec- 
tive color,  space  and  line  to  the  subjective 
sensation,  from  the  objective  factors  of 
beauty  to  the  subjective  enjoyment.  It 
must  now  be  quite  clear  to  us,  after  the 
foregoing  discussion,  that  the  aesthetic 
value  of  art  lies  in  its  reference  to  reality, 
and  that  the  popular  notion  that  science 
alone  deals  with  objective  reality,  art  with 
subjective  creations,  is  quite  misleading. 
We  have  seen  that  artist  and  scientist 
alike  express  the  objective  truth  of  real 
experience,  only  the  scientist  fixates  the 
connected  experience  and  the  artist  fixates 


Principles  of  Art  Education         75 

the  isolated  experience.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  we  designate  as  subjective 
every  account  of  the  world  which  has 
been  shaped  by  the  spiritual  energies  of 
man,  then  science  is  not  less  subjective 
than  art,  inasmuch  as  the  human  seeking 
for  connection  must  select  and  transform 
the  reality  just  as  much  as  does  the  en- 
deavor for  complete  isolation.  And  we 
know  that  the  view  is  also  wrong  which, 
as  sometimes  in  popular  discussions,  draws 
the  demarcation  line  between  objective 
and  subjective  in  the  middle  of  the  aesthetic 
field,  —  when  it  is  claimed  that  the  content 
of  the  picture  —  for  instance,  the  flower  — 
has  objective  character,  but  that  the  form 
of  presentation  —  for  instance,  the  position 
of  the  flower  in  the  framed  space — is  sub- 
jective. No,  we  have  seen  that  this  beau- 
tiful space-division  is  just  as  much  the 
expression  of  the  objective  characteristics 
of  space,  as  the  flower-picture  is  an  ex- 
pression of  the  flower.  And,  finally,  when 
we  turn  to  the  really  subjective  facts,  to 
the  psychological  processes,  we  again  find 
the  situation  of  art  and  science  not  differ- 
ent. The  mental  processes  by  which  we 
produce  scientific  judgments  and  logical 


76         Principles  of  Art  Education 

conceptions  and  conclusions  are,  in  the  same 
way  as  those  by  which  we  gain  beauty,  ma- 
terial for  psychological  inquiry. 

We  may  begin  our  study  of  the  psycho- 
logical factors  with  those  involved  in  the 
perception  of  spaces  and  outlines,  the 
simplest  of  the  various  elements ;  and  yet 
even  here  we  find  a  most  complicated  psy- 
chological problem.  ^Esthetics,  we  saw, 
demands  that  the  lines  which  divide  the 
space  shall  have  such  and  such  relations, 
that  they  shall  balance  with  regard  to  the 
middle  line,  that  the  vertical  composition 
shall  have  principles  different  from  those 
of  the  horizontal,  that  the  curves  shall  be 
in  harmony  with  each  other,  and  so  on; 
and  we  saw  that  all  this  resulted  from  the 
fact  that  the  lines  in  the  picture  are  not 
geometrical  lines,  but  expressions  of  the 
energies  of  forces  which  characterize  the 
resulting  spaces.  Psychology  must  now 
ask  how  it  happens  that  mere  lines  awake 
in  our  consciousness  the  ideas  and  feeling 
of  energies,  and  that  a  certain  combination 
of  these  lines  satisfies  us  while  other  com- 
binations displease  us.  The  question  itself, 
and  correspondingly  the  possible  answer,  is 
clearly  one  of  theoretical  scientific  interest 


Principles  of  Art  Education         77 

only ;  the  artist  himself  has  no  answer 
ready  in  his  aesthetic  instinct;  he  is  not 
even  conscious  of  our  problem  ;  he  feels 
the  existence  of  those  energies,  their  strug- 
gles, their  balance,  their  unity,  but  he  does 
not  look  on  them  as  processes  determined 
by  his  own  psychical  mechanism.  For  the 
question  we  seek  to  answer  there  is  thus 
no  help  to  be  found  in  the  studios,  but  only 
in  the  psychological  laboratory,  where  the 
modern  psychologist  is  nowadays  engaged 
in  analyzing  the  mental  states  and  in  find- 
ing their  psychological  and  physiological 
explanation  by  all  the  elaborate  methods 
and  schemes  of  the  so-called  "  new  "  psy- 
chology. And  the  laboratory  work  of 
recent  years  has  given  especial  attention 
to  the  particular  problem  which  we  have 
here  before  us. 

In  the  light  of  these  modern  experimental 
studies  the  processes  may  be  explained  in 
the  following  way.  Our  whole  visual 
space  is  a  product  of  a  combination  between 
optical  light  sensations  and  movement  sen- 
sations of  the  muscles  of  the  eyeball. 
Whenever  our  eye  is  reached  by  light  rays 
which  come  from  any  one  point  in  the  outer 
world,  the  lens  in  the  eye  brings  the  rays 


78         Principles  of  Art  Education 

to  convergence  at  one  point  of  the  retina. 
This  retinal  point  then  becomes  stimulated, 
and,  as  the  retina  is  connected  with  the 
brain  by  several  hundred  thousand  nerve 
fibres,  from  each  stimulated  point  of  the 
retina  the  excitement  is  carried  over  in  a 
special  track  to  a  special  cell  in  the  brain 
which  reacts  in  a  special  light  sensation. 
But  this  sensory  stimulation  of  the  brain  is 
only  the  beginning  of  the  process;  if  it 
were  all,  we  should  see  light,  but  we  should 
not  localize  it ;  we  should  feel  many  colors, 
perhaps,  but  we  should  feel  them  like  the 
odors  of  a  bouquet  or  like  the  tones  of  a 
chord,  as  a  manifoldness  without  any  order 
in  space.  But  in  reality  the  stimulation  of 
the  special  brain  cell  produces  at  once  a 
secondary  process ;  the  brain  gives  and 
must  give  a  special  motor  impulse  to  the 
muscles  around  and  in  the  eyeball,  an  im- 
pulse by  which  certain  movements,  rota- 
tions and  accommodations  of  the  eye  are 
effected.  This  action  is  necessary  for  our 
clear  discriminating  vision,  because  only  in 
the  middle  of  the  retina,  in  the  fixation 
point,  are  the  elements  of  the  retina  so 
near  together  that  a  sharp,  distinct  stimu- 
lation can  be  secured;  only  there  does  a 


Principles  of  Art  Education        79 

special  nervous  end-apparatus  correspond 
to  every  light  point  of  the  outer  world.  To 
see  distinctly,  we  must  see  with  the  fixa- 
tion point,  and  to  do  so  we  must  rely  on  a 
mechanism  which  moves  our  eyeball  so 
that  every  ray  of  light  which  reaches  our 
eye  is  immediately  brought  over  the  fixa- 
tion point.  Every  brain  cell  which  is  con- 
nected with  a  special  point  in  the  retina 
has,  therefore,  one  special  motor  impulse  of 
its  own  —  the  impulse  which  gives  to  the 
eye  just  the  turn  by  which  the  image  of 
the  outer  thing  is  brought  exactly  into  the 
centre  of  the  retina. 

These  movements  have  again  a  second- 
ary effect ;  like  all  movements  in  our  body, 
they  give  again  sensations  on  their  own 
part ;  the  moving  upwards  or  outwards  of 
the  eye  gives  us  movement  sensations,  and, 
as  we  saw  that  each  retinal  stimulation 
must  secure  in  the  brain  one  special  motor 
impulse,  so  each  light  sensation  must  couple 
itself  with  one  special  movement  sensation. 
The  system  of  these  movement  sensations 
gives  to  the  ligjit  sensations  to  which  they 
are  attached  i^heir  "  local  signs " ;  that 
which  we  call  the  position  of  a  special  light 
point  is  the  movement  sensation  which 


80         Principles  of  Art  Education 

results  when  we  turn  the  eye  by  brain- 
reflex  to  bring  the  light  on  the  fixation 
point.  The  system  of  these  movement 
sensations  is  the  optical  space,  just  as  the 
movement  sensations  connected  with  the 
tactual  sensations  give  us  the  tactual  space. 
Anything  which  reinforces  these  eye  move- 
ments makes  us  overestimate  the  space 
distance ;  anything  which  reduces  the  eye 
movements  leads  to  underestimation.  Here 
lies  the  reason  for  all  the  well-known 
optical  illusions ;  the  divided  line  appears, 
for  instance,  larger  than  the  undivided 
line,  because  the  points  of  division  force 
the  eye  to  move  in  jerks  from  one  point  to 
the  other,  and  these  many  small  movement- 
impulses  give  stronger  muscular  sensations 
than  the  one  straight  movement  from  the 
one  endpoint  of  the  line  to  the  other.  Of 
course  we  cannot  really  pass  through  all 
the  eye  movements  which  would  be  stimu- 
lated by  the  thousands  of  light  points 
which  we  see,  for  instance,  in  seeing  a 
room.  The  points  on  the  right  push  the 
eye  to  the  right ;  the  points  on  the  left,  to 
the  left;  and  if  they  are  equally  strong, 
the  result  must  be  that  the  eyeball  remains 
at  rest.  It  is  true  that  the  movement  does 


Principles  of  Art  Education        81 

not  actually  result,  but,  as  each  stimulation 
has  often  been  accompanied  by  the  char- 
acteristic movement  in  earlier  experience, 
the  stimulation  of  the  special  brain  cell  and 
its  sensation  enters  into  a  central  associa- 
tion with  the  movement  sensation,  and 
each  impression  has  thus  its  local  label 
ot  associative  reproductions  of  movement 
sensations,  even  when  the  movement  itself 
is  not  going  on.  We  consider  intention- 
ally here  merely  the  simpler  case  of  local 
relations  in  the  two  dimensions  of  the  plane, 
as  they  alone  are  important  for  pictorial 
art ;  the  third  dimension,  the  plastic  seeing, 
is  more  complex,  but  involves  no  other 
principles,  as  its  perception  is  also  a  func- 
tion of  eye  movements  ;  the  eye  movements 
involved,  however,  are  more  complicated, 
they  are  movements  of  convergence  pro- 
duced by  the  difference  of  the  two  retinal 
images  and  movements  of  lens  accommoda- 
tion produced  by  the  blurring  of  the  retinal 
stimulus.  Our  result,  up  to  this  point,  is 
then,  that  we  are  conscious  of  the  local 
relations  of  optical  points  not  from  the 
optical  sensations  themselves,  but  from  the 
movement  sensations  which  originate  with 
the  eyeball  muscles,  and  that  these  muscles 


82        Principles  of  Art  Education 

move  by  brain-reflex  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  one  point  after  the  other  into  the 
middle  point  of  most  distinct  vision.  Every 
curve  or  line  or  space-division  is  thus  psy- 
chologically a  system  of  eye  movement  sensa- 
tions. 

Is  this  enough  to  explain  why  certain 
combinations  or  divisions  of  lines  and 
spaces  are  agreeable  or  disagreeable  ?  Cer- 
tainly not.  If  it  were  all,  we  should  see 
the  lines  and  spaces  merely  as  geometrical 
figures,  and  while  certain  movements 
would  be  more  difficult  for  the  eye  than 
others,  this  increase  of  difficulty  would  be 
felt  as  stronger  effort,  and  the  stronger 
effort  would  be  interpreted  as  a  greater 
local  distance.  Of  course  we  can  see  the 
spaces  and  lines  as  geometrical  construc- 
tions only,  and  in  ordinary  life  most  of  our 
optical  impressions  come  to  us  in  that  way 
alone  in  that  case  nothing  beyond  the 
characterized  processes  happens.  But 
there  is  another  possibility.  The  motor 
impulse  of  the  brain  may  radiate  to  other 
muscle  groups  of  our  organism.  The  light 
points  on  the  right  may  stir  up  not  only 
the  eye  muscles  to  move  our  eyes  to  the 
right,  but  may  excite  our  whole  organism 


Principles  o/  Art  Education        83 

to  turn  to  the  right  side,  to  extend  the 
arms  in  that  direction,  to  grasp  with  the 
hands  for  the  object.  The  brain  mecha- 
nism for  this  transmission  of  stimulation 
into  bodily  action  does  exist  and  must 
exist,  for  it  is  clearly  the  condition  for  the 
local  adjustment  of  our  actions  in  practical 
life.  Whenever  one  object  in  the  field  of 
vision  demands  our  practical  action,  per- 
haps our  grasp  of  it,  the  locally  related 
system  of  movement-impulses  is  brought 
about  through  the  optical  impression.  The 
object  high  in  the  field  of  vision  turns  our 
whole  body  upwards,  the  low  object  down- 
wards. 

Now  there  are  three  possibilities,  three 
cases  which  we  can  clearly  separate  theo- 
retically, although  practically  no  sharp 
demarcation  line  exists,  and  endlessly  many 
combinations  and  transmissions  between 
the  three  schemes  are  found.  The  first 
case  is  that  in  which  the  motor  impulse  to 
the  body  finds  the  organism  engaged  in 
other  activities  under  the  control  of  more 
vivid  impressions  or  ideas  or  thoughts. 
The  new  excitement  is  thus  inhibited; 
that  is,  the  eyes  follow  the  outlines  of  the 
visual  objects,  but  the  body  as  a  whole 


84        Principles  of  Art  Education 

remains  unmoved.  That  is,  of  course,  the 
most  frequent  case.  We  see  in  every 
instant  plenty  of  forms,  but  they  do  not 
engage  our  organism  outside  of  the  eye- 
balls, and  the  result  is  that  the  forms  are 
merely  local  distances  and  directions. 
The  second  case  is  that  in  which  the 
objects  in  the  visual  field  deman  d  from  us 
an  action ;  whether  we  approach  the  thing 
or  escape  from  it,  whether  we  change  it  in 
one  way  or  in  another  is,  of  course,  deter- 
mined by  the  qualities  of  the  object,  but 
the  general  local  adjustment  depends 
necessarily  upon  its  local  forms;  we  grasp 
the  thing  by  its  handle,  we  put  the  foot  to 
the  sidewalk,  we  move  the  pen  according 
to  the  form  of  the  letter.  In  this  second 
case  the  optical  impression  does  produce  a 
bodily  movement,  but  the  corresponding 
movement  sensation  is  felt  as  a  state  of 
one's  own  personality,  as  indication  of  the 
subjective  reaction.  We  perceive  the 
thing  and  we  perceive  ourselves  as  per- 
forming the  action ;  yes,  we  may  say  that 
the  idea  which  brings  about  the  action  is 
more  than  the  optical  impression ;  it  is  the 
optical  impression  plus  the  idea  of  the 
change  to  be  reached  by  the  movement,  an 


Principles  of  Art  Education        85 

idea  which  results  from  associative  pro- 
cesses in  the  brain.  We  may  say  in 
general :  whenever  the  given  optical 
impression  connects  itself  with  the  idea  of 
a  future  effect  or  change,  the  resulting 
motor  impulse  is  felt  and  interpreted  as 
our  own  activity,  directed  towards  the 
future  end. 

But  a  third  case  is  possible.  The  optical 
impression,  as  it  is  at  present  and  for  itself 
alone,  may  absorb  our  mind;  then  the 
motor  impulse  to  the  organism  will  dis- 
charge itself  and  lead  to  localized  tensions 
and  movement  sensations.  Here  the  im- 
pulse is  not,  as  in  our  first  case,  checked 
by  motions  in  the  interest  of  other  objects, 
for  the  presupposition  was  that  one  object 
alone  rilled  our  mind.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  impulse  cannot  now  lead  to  a  practical 
action,  as  in  our  second  case,  for  we  saw 
that  every  practical  action  involves  the 
idea  of  an  end  to  be  reached ;  thus  leading 
beyond  the  present  impression  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  presupposition,  fills  the 
whole  mind.  The  suppression  and  inhibi- 
tion of  the  idea  of  practical  future  end 
thus  creates  a  suppression  of  the  real 
external  movement,  an  effect  which  is 


86         Principles  of  Art  Education 

produced  in  the  organism  by  an  innervation 
of  the  antagonistic  muscles.  That  which 
the  motor  impulse  produces  is  thus  not  an 
actual  movement,  but  a  system  of  tensions 
and  contractions  which  gives  us  subjective 
feelings  of  strain,  of  effort,  of  tension,  of 
direction,  of  movement-intention.  But 
further,  we  assumed  that  nothing  beyond 
the  idea  of  the  optical  impression  was  to 
be  in  our  mind ;  thus  we  are  not  thinking 
of  ourselves  as  objects,  as  empirical  person- 
alities ;  every  thought  concerning  our- 
selves and  our  actions  would  lead  us  away 
and  would  link  the  visual  impression  with 
something  else.  The  result  must  be  that 
the  feelings  of  strain  and  impulse  which 
go  on  in  ourselves  are  not  projected  into 
our  body,  but  into  the  visual  impression ; 
just  as  the  optical  sensations  were  all  the 
time  joining  themselves  with  the  move- 
ment sensations  of  the  eye  muscles,  so  in 
this  case,  optical  sensations  and  eye  muscle 
sensations  are  fusing  with  sensations  of 
bodily  tension,  and  while  the  muscle  sen- 
sations of  the  eyes  give  the  local  values  and 
distance  relations  to  the  light-impressions 
and  thus  build  up  ideas  of  geometrical 
forms,  these  sensations  of  impulse  and  strain 


Principles  of  Art  Education        87 

give  to  the  optical  forms  an  element  of  force 
and  energy.  We  ourselves  are  contracting 
our  muscles,  but  we  feel  as  if  the  lines  were 
pulling  and  piercing,  bending  and  lifting, 
pressing  down  and  pushing  up ;  in  short, 
as  soon  as  the  visual  impression  is  really 
isolated,  and  all  other  ideas  really  excluded, 
then  the  motor  impulses  do  not  awake 
actions  which  are  taken  as  actions  of  our- 
selves, but  feelings  of  energy  which  are 
taken  as  energies  of  the  visual  forms  and 
lines.  We  saw  that  this  isolation  of  the 
impression  characterizes  the  aesthetic  atti- 
tude; we  understand  now  on  a  psycho- 
logical basis  why  it  is  just  in  the  aesthetic 
apperception  that  the  lines  mean  energies, 
while  in  every  practical  relation  or  scien- 
tific apperception,  the  lines  mean  distances 
only. 

But  we  can  go  further.  If  the  energies 
which  we  feel  in  the  lines  are  external 
projections  of  our  own  energies,  we  under- 
stand the  psychological  reasons  why  certain 
combinations  of  lines  please  us  and  others  do 
not.  As  long  as  the  lines  are  geometrical 
figures  only,  any  combination  of  lines  has 
its  right  to  existence ;  as  soon  as  they 
represent  energies  we  say  that  the  aesthetic 


88         Principles  of  Art  Education 

demand  prescribes  how  the  lines  "  ought " 
to  be.  They  ought  to  be  such  that  they 
correspond  to  the  natural  energies  of  our 
own  organism  and  represent  the  harmony 
of  our  own  muscular  functions,  because 
every  interference  with  the  natural  inner- 
vations  of  our  system  would  turn  our  at- 
tention to  our  own  body  and  would  destroy 
thus  the  isolation ;  the  movement-impulses 
would  appear  then  again  as  states  of  our- 
selves. For  instance,  we  are  symmetrical 
beings;  our  natural  movement  tendencies 
are  equally  distributed  to  the  right  and  to 
the  left;  the  result  is  that  we  demand 
from  the  play  of  lines  that  they  balance 
each  other.  On  the  other  hand,  our 
organism  is  not  symmetrical  as  to  the 
upper  and  lower  half;  we  feel  in  our 
muscular  energies  that  our  lower  part  has 
to  give  us  stability,  while  the  upper  half 
has  the  free  mobility  of  action ;  the  result 
is  that  we  do  not  want  a  vertical  symmetry 
in  the  energies  of  our  optical  forms  ;  they, 
too,  must  show  the  stability  in  the  lower, 
the  freedom  and  ease  in  the  upper  part. 
In  eveiy  case  the  interest,  and  thus  the 
beauty,  must  grow  with  the  complexity  of 
energies  involved;  the  bilateral  balance 


Principles  of  Art  Education         89 

of  rigid  geometrical  symmetry  is  thus  less 
interesting  than  the  balance  of  unequal 
combinations  of  lines  where,  for  instance, 
the  length  of  the  lines  on  one  side  is 
balanced  by  the  strangeness  of  the  curves, 
or  by  the  outward  bending  of  the  line,  or 
by  the  heaviness  of  the  line  combination 
on  the  other.  The  richer  and  the  more 
manifold  the  motor  impulses  which  reflect 
in  our  consciousness,  the  higher  is  the 
sesthetical  value  of  the  form,  but  even  the 
simple  symmetrical  design  is  completely 
beautiful  because  it  corresponds,  by  the 
energies  which  its  lines  express,  completely 
to  the  energies  of  our  own  personality. 

Now  we  understand  all  those  secondary 
features  which  the  aesthetic  discussion 
introduced ;  for  instance,  the  importance  of 
the  frame  and  its  influences  on  the  whole 
composition.  The  optical  impressions  of 
the  framing  lines  work  as  stimuli  for  motor 
impulses  to  push  us  towards  the  centre; 
they  indicate  the  regions  beyond  which  we 
must  not  move,  and  this  motor  influence, 
exerted  from  all  sides  at  the  same  time, 
must  concentrate  our  whole  motor  energy 
to  the  centre,  so  that  every  movement- 
impulse  gets  a  reinforcement  from  its 


90         Principles  of  Art  Education 

nearness  to  the  centre ;  thus  the  nearer  to  the 
centre  in  the  framed  picture,  the  stronger 
the  strain  and  force.  In  the  unframed 
design,  on  the  other  hand,  no  central  point 
keeps  our  activity  back;  we  can  freely 
move  in  every  direction  and  the  greater 
the  distance  we  have  to  move  from  the 
middle,  that  is,  the  greater  the  effort  to 
turn  to  it,  the  more  energy  seems  expressed 
by  the  line.  Thus  in  the  design  —  and  the 
so-called  modern  Preraphaelite  pictures  and 
"  Nouveau  Art "  have  a  tendency  to  imi- 
tate this  design-like  character  and  to  sug- 
gest a  neglect  of  the  frame  —  the  strain  is 
the  stronger  the  farther  away  from  the 
centre ;  in  the  framed  picture  the  stronger 
the  nearer  to  the  centre.  There  is  no  form 
and  no  combination  of  lines  whose  formal 
beauty  cannot  be  understood  psychologi- 
cally by  their  correspondence  with  the 
natural  motor  energies  of  our  body.  But 
we  must  never  forget  that  all  this  is  true 
merely  for  the  one  case  in  which  the 
optical  impression  is  the  only  idea  which 
fills  our  mind  in  complete  isolation;  as 
soon  as  we  connect  the  impression  with 
ideas  which  lead  beyond  it,  the  motor  re- 
action becomes  interpreted  as  our  activity 


Principles  of  Art  Education        91 

and  not  as  energy  of  the  lines,  and  the 
demand  for  a  correspondence  between 
objective  and  subjective  energies  does  not 
exist  any  longer.  If  we  see  on  a  paper 
before  us  a  combination  of  lines  which 
means  to  us  a  geographical  map  or  the 
map  of  a  city  or  a  microscopical  view  of  a 
tissue,  we  do  not  feel  the  slightest  discom- 
fort from  the  combination  of  lines,  even  if 
they  have  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
energies  of  our  bodies,  simply  because  in 
such  a  case  the  lines  do  not  come  in  ques- 
tion for  their  own  account;  they  are  not 
isolated  but  connected  with  other  experi- 
ences which  demand  our  practical  actions, 
and  our  reactions,  beyond  those  of  the  eye 
muscles,  are  interpreted  as  our  own  activi- 
ties and  not  as  energies  of  the  line.  The 
forms  of  the  city  map  satisfy  us  perfectly, 
while,  if  taken  as  design,  they  would 
tumble  over,  interfere  with  each  other,  fall 
in  pieces,  lack  every  harmony.  To  take 
an  sesthetical  attitude  towards  the  forms ; 
or  to  interpret  them  as  energies  which 
must  correspond  to  the  relations  of  our 
own  bodily  movements,  as  if  we  lived  in 
these  lines ;  or,  finally,  to  isolate  these  opti- 
cal impressions  in  our  own  consciousness 


92         Principles  of  Art  Education 

from  all  other  ideas,  so  that  they  as  im- 
pressions control  our  motor  discharges  — 
are  thus  merely  three  different  expressions 
for  the  same  thing. 

The  question  of  the  outlines  of  figures 
and  of  the  division  of  space  is  only  one 
side   of   the   form   problem;   we   saw  the 
other   side   in   the  question  of   light  and 
color.      There,  too,  the   sesthetician   gave 
his  normative   prescriptions,  but  the  psy- 
chologist   must   attempt    his   explanatory 
account  which  has  not,  like  the  sesthetical 
rules,  to  refer  to  physical  light  intensities 
and  color  qualities,  but  to  light  sensations 
and  color  sensations.     It  is  true  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  psychologist  in  this  respect  is 
to-day  much  less  satisfactory  than  in  the 
question   of   forms.     The  interest  of   the 
psychologist   concerning   light    and   color 
must   turn  naturally  at  first   towards  the 
problems  of  the  sensory  process   itself  — 
of  what  the  relations  are  between  the  outer 
stimuli   and  the   qualities   of    the   visual 
impressions;   of  what  goes  on  in  the  eye 
and  in  the  brain ;  of  how  the  extension  or 
the  duration,  the  foregoing  or  the  surround- 
ing light,  the  combination   of  lights  and 
the  intensity  of  lights,  and  hundred  other 


Principles  of  Art  Education        93 

factors  change  the  resulting  sensations. 
These  are  the  questions  which  must  be 
settled  at  first  if  the  light  impressions  are 
to  be  understood  at  all.  And  as  these 
problems  are  extremely  difficult  and  de- 
mand the  most  complicated  experimental 
research  of  generations,  the  phenomena  of 
mixture,  after-image,  contrast,  color-blind- 
ness, adaptation  for  different  intensities, 
influence  of  time  and  space,  of  exposure, 
and,  above  all,  the  theories  concerning  the 
retinal  processes  have,  on  the  whole,  ab- 
sorbed the  interest,  while  those  questions 
which  start  from  the  complicated  light  sen- 
sation, for  instance,  as  to  the  subjective 
effects  of  the  colors  on  our  whole  mental 
and  physical  organization,  have  found  very 
little  consideration. 

And  yet  it  is  clear  that  merely  this 
second  group  of  problems  has  immediate 
bearing  on  our  sesthetical  question.  The 
other  group  of  optical  inquiries  explains 
the  appearance  of  the  visual  perceptions, 
but  not  their  sesthetical  value.  Of  course, 
indirectly  they  have  reference  to  our  artistic 
phenomena  too,  as  we  demand  an  explana- 
tion why,  for  instance,  certain  colors  rein- 
force each  other  in  our  mind:  why  the 


94        Principles  of  Art  Education 

red  looks  so  much  more  glowing  if  it  is 
surrounded  or  crossed  by  green,  why  the 
gray  appears  so  much  lighter  on  a  black 
than  on  a  white  background,  why  the 
small  gray  field  on  the  blue  ground  looks 
yellowish,  and  on  a  yellow  ground  looks 
bluish,  and  so  on.  The  psychologist  ex- 
plains such  phenomena  easily.  He  tells 
us  that  there  are  three  chemical  substances 
in  every  nervous  end-apparatus  of  our 
retina :  one  which  is  decomposed  by  white 
light  and  assimilated  in  the  absence  of 
stimulus,  i.  e.,  black ;  one  which  is  decom- 
posed by  yellow  light  and  assimilated  in 
blue  light ;  and  one  which  is  decomposed 
by  green  light  and  assimilated  in  red  light. 
These  processes  of  chemical  decomposi- 
tion in  the  retina  produce,  then,  in  the 
brain,  those  excitements  which  are  accom- 
panied by  the  sensations  white,  yellow  and 
green;  and  the  processes  of  assimilation 
produce  the  sensations  of  blue,  red  and 
black.  There  are  no  other  light  sensations 
than  these  six,  while  these  six  are  not 
capable  of  being  further  dissolved;  green 
is  never  subjectively  yellow  and  blue,  while 
physically,  the  painter's  brush  can  mix 
yellow  and  blue  into  green;  and  white 


Principles  of  Art  Education        95 

never  contains  any  color  sensations,  while 
physically,  the  white  light  may  be  dissolved 
by  a  prism  into  the  spectrum  colors.  Psy- 
chologically, we  have  thus  six  colors; 
orange  is  merely  a  combination  of  red  and 
yellow,  violet  a  combination  of  red  and  blue, 
gray  a  combination  of  white  and  black, 
brown  of  yellow  and  black,  pink  of  red  and 
white,  and  so  on.  Now,  if  in  the  retina 
an  overdecomposition  of  a  certain  chemical 
substance  occurs,  the  decomposed  chemical 
stuff  must  produce  an  increased  assimila- 
tion of  that  same  substance  in  the  neighbor- 
hood; therefore,  if  the  ground  is  yellow, 
that  yellow-blue  substance  decomposes  and 
the  decomposed  substance  is  carried  to  the 
surrounding,  so  that  an  overassimilation  of 
the  same  substance  goes  on  in  those  fields 
which  are  not  stimulated  by  the  yellow 
light;  and,  as  the  assimilation  produces 
blue  sensations,  the  gray  field  appears 
bluish.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  ground 
is  blue,  an  overassimilation  of  that  sub- 
stance goes  on,  and  to  get  the  material  for 
that  new  assimilation  it  must  be  taken 
from  the  neighborhood ;  that  is,  in  all  those 
places  where  no  blue  light  is  working  an 
auxiliary  decomposition  will  result,  and 


96         Principles  of  Art  Education 

thus  the  gray  object  appears  yellowish. 
The  same  relations  obtain  between  green 
and  red,  between  white  and  black.  There 
are  plenty  of  explanatory  details  of  a  simi- 
lar character  to  be  considered,  and  yet,  we 
insist  again,  all  this  is  only  preparatory  to 
the  real  central  question,  why  the  one  com- 
bination of  lights  is  satisfactory  and  the 
other  not.  The  fact  that  one  color  inter- 
feres with  the  other  in  the  retina  explains, 
of  course,  merely  why  the  color  disappears 
or  becomes  changed  in  its  color  tone  ;  but 
why  the  one  harmonizes  or  conflicts  in  our 
mind  with  the  other  is  not  explained  by 
such  explanation  of  the  processes  in  the 
sense  organ.  Even  if  we  consider  the  suc- 
cession of  the  various  impressions  —  and 
we  must  not  neglect  this  aspect,  for  our 
eyes  are  continuously  moving  over  the 
various  color  fields  —  we  can  understand 
by  means  of  the  retina  theory  how  one 
color  prepares  us  for  a  succeeding  color, 
how  decomposition  in  a  substance  favors  a 
following  assimilation ;  but  that  also  merely 
explains  why  we  see  the  red  as  more  in- 
tense after  passing  over  the  green  surface ; 
an  explanation  of  the  inner  accord  or  dis- 
cord is  not  involved. 


Principles  of  Art  Education         97 

To  reach  an  explanation  of  this  mutual 
relation,  we  must  remember  that  the  8Bs- 
thetical  discussion  gave  to  light  more  than 
its  lightness  and  color  quality  alone:  the 
light  was  characterized  by  warmth  and  cold- 
ness, by  serenity  and  depression,  by  excite- 
ment and  quietude,  and  we  appreciated 
the  light  effects  as  expressions  of  such 
sentiments.  Can  we  doubt  that  we  have 
here  exactly  the  same  situation  as  in  the 
case  of  the  lines,  where  the  apparently  ex- 
pressed energies  showed  themselves  in  psy- 
chological analysis  as  outward  projections 
of  our  organic  motor  reactions  ?  If  we  see 
a  white  snow  landscape  at  first  through  a 
red  and  then  through  a  blue  glass,  and  we 
see  at  one  time  the  whole  nature  in  glow- 
ing excitement,  the  other  time  in  quiet, 
cool  depression,  can  we  doubt  that  it  is 
our  own  tension  and  our  own  relaxation 
which  projects  itself  into  nature  ?  Indeed, 
the  impression  of  lightness  or  darkness,  of 
pure  or  mixed,  of  saturated  or  unsaturated 
color,  are  starting  points  for  centrifugal 
waves  which  are  carried  through  the  whole 
body,  influence  our  breathing  and  our 
blood  circulation,  our  muscular  strain,  the 
nressiire  of  our  joints,  the  tension  of  our 


98         Principles  of  Art  Education 

tendons,  the  widening  of  our  pupil,  the 
tonus  of  our  whole  system.  All  this  again, 
as  with  the  forms,  is  kept  apart  from  the 
impression  and  either  checked  by  other 
activities  or  felt  as  personal  action  if  the 
light-impression  is  not  the  only  object  of 
the  mind.  If  the  red  and  green  are  railroad 
signals,  the  colors  connect  themselves  with 
ideas  of  purposes  and  do  not  stand  isolated 
for  themselves;  the  organic  effects  fuse 
with  the  practical  reaction  and  the  colors 
remain  without  a  mood  just  as  the  lines 
which  fill  a  city  map  remain  without 
energy.  But  where  the  isolation  is  com- 
pleted, our  excitement  and  the  depression 
attach  themselves  to  the  impression,  and 
the  conditions  of  our  peripheral  personality 
control  again  the  fitness  of  the  light-com- 
bination. 

It  is  the  natural  interdependence  of  our 
bodily  organs  which  forbids  that,  for  in- 
stance, a  glaring  saturated  color  shall  stand 
out  in  a  picture  made  up  of  unsaturated 
lights,  as  the  faint  color  tones  of  the  chief 
parts  bring  the  whole  organic  system  by 
reflex  into  a  tonus  which  cannot  harmonize 
with  the  strong  tension  of  the  glaring 
light;  their  mutual  interference  would 


Principles  of  Art  Education         99 

make  us  conscious  of  the  body  as  such, 
and  the  result  would  be  that  the  complete 
absorption  in  the  color  is  lost,  the  isolation 
thus  destroyed  and,  therefore,  the  aesthetic 
attitude  made  impossible.  The  organism 
does  not  demand  mere  uniformity  and 
monotony  of  reactions  —  variety  increases 
the  interest  and  heightens  the  beauty  of 
light  as  much  as  of  shape  —  but  as  in  the 
case  of  forms  we  must  keep  our  personal 
balance  between  right  and  left  or  the  per- 
sonal stability  of  a  firm  base,  so  the  varia- 
tions of  light-excitement  must  keep  in  all 
their  manifoldness  a  balance  about  a  certain 
middle  value  which  is  represented  by  a 
certain  tonus  of  our  organism  :  the  more 
the  excitement  and  strain  goes  beyond  that 
tonus  in  one  direction,  the  more  it  must 
be  accompanied  by  a  counteraction  of  de- 
pression and  relaxation.  That  those 
movement-impulses  starting  from  the  line- 
impressions  and  these  organic  waves  start- 
ing from  the  light-impressions  stand  in 
close  relation  is  a  matter  of  course ;  not 
every  tonus  can  harmonize  with  every  im- 
pulse, the  mutual  interferences  would  lead 
again  to  a  destruction  of  the  isolation. 
Complete  beauty  thus  demands  that  form 


100       Principles  of  Art  Education 

and  color  shall  be  adjusted  to  each  other; 
gay  lines  demand  gay  tints,  soft  curves  ask 
for  soft  lights  and  grave  forms  for  grave 
colors. 

The  psychologist's  interest  in  the  effect 
of  the  picture  is  not  confined  to  the  forms 
and  colors.  We  rejected  the  popular  view 
that  form  and  color  alone  make  up  the 
subjective  side  of  the  picture,  while  the 
content  is  objective ;  we  saw  that  from  an 
aesthetic  point  of  view  both  form  and  con- 
tent are  expressions  of  objective  truth,  but 
that  correspondingly,  from  a  psychological 
point  of  view,  both  content  and  form  are 
mental  characteristics  of  the  complex  idea. 
The  lines  and  lights,  as  form,  find  their 
expressiveness  through  the  mental  states 
of  movement  sensations  and  tension  sensa- 
tions which  are  added  to  the  visual  sen- 
sations ;  the  content  finds  its  presentation, 
of  course,  also  in  lines  and  lights  ,  nothing 
besides  lines  and  lights  reaches  the  retina 
when  we  see  the  picture  of  a  flower  or  a 
bird,  a  landscape  or  an  historic  scene,  and 
now  arises,  therefore,  the  question :  what 
mental  states  are  added  to  the  visual  sen- 
sations to  give  them  the  expression  of  a 
special  content? 


Principles  of  Art  Education       101 

The  impressions,  we  said,  are  lines  and 
lights  only  ;  and  yet  the  subjective  results 
must  be  more  than  the  mere  summation  of 
the  single  effects  resulting  from  the  single 
lights  and  lines.  As  long  as  they  are  pro- 
ducing their  own  effects,  we  have  merely 
a  design  expressing  the  meaning  of  space 
and  color;  the  psychical  effect  of  the  real 
picture  thus  depends  upon  the  special  com- 
bination of  lights  and  lines.  And  yet  the 
principle  remains  the  same.  The  added 
psychical  contents  are  here  not  simple  auto- 
matic reactions,  as  in  the  case  of  form  and 
color,  but  the  mediate  reactions  which  are 
brought  about  by  association.  These  asso- 
ciations are  ours,  and  ours  are  the  impulses 
to  action  which  come  from  them,  but  both 
are  again  projected  into  the  impression 
when  it  is  really  isolated  in  our  mind.  The 
lines  and  colors  of  the  portrait  remain  a 
fine  play  of  the  curves  and  lights  and  thus 
of  energies  and  tones;  but,  besides  that, 
they  awake  in  us  by  association  the  idea  of 
a  type  of  character,  earlier  experiences 
come  to  the  background  of  our  conscious- 
ness, and  all  together  call  up  a  certain  atti- 
tude of  liking  or  disliking,  of  respect  or 
contempt,  of  love  or  hate.  But  if  these 


102       Principles  of  Art  Education 

associative  ideas  came  up  as  memories  of 
other  men  or  if  those  impulses  to  reflected 
action  really  led  to  practical  actions,  that 
is,  to  foreseen  changes  of  the  outer  world, 
then,  of  course,  there  would  be  no  further 
isolation,  but  the  fullest  possible  connec- 
tion; then  we  should  take  the  attitude 
with  which  we  study  the  photographic 
illustration  of  a  man's  head,  perhaps  in  a 
political  magazine  —  that  is,  the  logical 
attitude  of  information,  but  not  the  artistic 
attitude  toward  a  portrait.  All  these  asso- 
ciations and  mediate  reactions  must  thus 
fuse  with  the  given  impression,  illuminate 
and  enrich  it,  make  it  living,  but  never 
lead  beyond  it.  This  is  possible  only  when 
two  psycho-physical  conditions  are  fulfilled. 
Firstly,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  motor 
reactions  on  lines,  so  here  in  the  case  of 
the  motor  reactions  on  associations,  the 
impulse  must  not  lead  to  a  real  action,  but 
must  be  felt  only  as  an  impulse.  This 
psycho-physical  effect  results  from  that 
natural  inhibition  which  comes  through 
the  idea  of  the  unreality  of  the  object. 
Therefore,  the  beauty  is  lost  when  the 
appearance  deceives  us  so  as  to  give  the  im- 
pression of  reality ;  now  the  real  practical 


Principles  of  Art  Education       103 

reactions  result,  the  reacting  personality 
with  its  own  ends  and  aims  of  action  stands 
against  the  object,  the  isolation  is  gone. 
The  impulse  is  then  no  longer  interpreta- 
tion of  the  object  fusing  with  its  impres- 
sion, but  a  factor  of  one's  own  activity, 
while  the  impression  loses  its  beautiful 
expressiveness. 

Secondly,  if  the  associations  which  come 
up — and  must  come  up  to  give  expressive 
character  to  the  combination  of  impressions 
—  if  these  associations  are  not  to  lead  us 
away  from  the  given  presentation  and  thus 
not  to  destroy  the  isolation,  the  associa- 
tions themselves  must  be  of  a  peculiar 
kind.  Under  the  natural  conditions  of 
daily  life,  when  we  see  a  thing  our  asso- 
ciations lead  us  away ;  the  picture  of  one 
person  reminds  us  of  others,  the  landscape 
reminds  us  of  other  places,  of  earlier  ex- 
periences, of  all  kinds  of  information  and 
knowledge.  It  is  clear  that  in  such  a 
wandering  mind,  the  given  presentation 
connects  itself  in  a  hundred  directions. 
And  yet  we  have  insisted  that  the  beauty 
of  the  content  presupposes  associations. 
How  can  we  understand  this  apparent  con- 
tradiction? Well,  we  must  demand  that 


104       Principles  of  Art  Education 

the  associations  keep  us  to  the  given  im- 
pression. And  this  is  possible  only  under 
the  one  condition,  that  the  impulses  of 
action  which  are  suggested  by  the  associa- 
tion do  not  antagonize  the  impulses  of 
action  which  come  from  the  impression 
itself.  The  associations  must  thus  help 
the  impressions,  must  fill  out  the  impres- 
sions, must  give  detail  and  background  to 
them  and  thus  reinforce  and  specialize  the 
impulses  which  belong  to  the  given  reality, 
but  never  lead  beyond  it. 

Expressed  in  the  terms  of  physiology, 
we  might  say  that  the  stimulated  brain 
cells  must  carry  their  excitement  merely 
to  those  associative  brain  cells  whose 
motor  discharge  is  in  harmony  with  the 
primary  impulses  of  the  impression,  while 
all  those  associations  whose  motor  dis- 
charge would  be  antagonistic  are  com- 
pletely inhibited.  Psycho-physiologically, 
the  aesthetic  effect  comes  thus  into  nearest 
neighborhood  to  the  processes  of  attention 
and  suggestion.  Attention  and  suggestion 
also  involve  that  increase  of  vividness  in 
the  idea  by  which  the  antagonistic  ideas, 
that  is,  those  which  would  lead  to  an- 
tagonistic actions,  are  suppressed  and 


Principles  of  Art  Education      105 

eliminated.  Psychologically,  inhibition  is 
thus  the  central  phenomenon  of  aesthetic 
processes  as  far  as  the  content  of  the  picture 
is  in  question ;  associations  must  enter  to 
make  the  content  manifold  and  interesting, 
but  the  complete  inhibition  of  those  asso- 
ciations which  would  lead  to  new  attitudes 
and  actions  is  the  one  central  condition  by 
which  perfect  isolation  is  secured ;  and 
only  with  this  isolation  do  the  reactions 
become  characteristics  of  the  impression 
instead  of  states  of  ourselves. 

It  is  a  necessary  consequence  that  this 
situation  forces  rules  and  prescriptions  on 
the  work  of  art.  If  we  saw  that  the  psy- 
chological conditions  of  our  muscle  and 
nervous  system  demand  a  certain  combi- 
nation of  lines  or  lights,  it  is  clear  that  the 
whole  disposition  of  our  central  nervous 
system,  that  is,  the  whole  preparation  and 
education  of  our  brain,  forces  certain  de- 
mands on  the  contents.  If  we  have  no 
associations  at  our  disposal  by  which  we 
can  illustrate  the  impression,  so  that  we  do 
not  understand  the  work  of  art ;  or  worse, 
if  we  cannot  control  our  associations  and 
are  thus  led  to  new  contents  outside  of  the 
presented  impression;  or  if  we  cannot 


106       Principles  of  Art  Education 

suppress  the  real  practical  action ;  —  then 
no  aesthetic  attitude  is  possible,  for  the  cen- 
tral isolation  is  psychologically  destroyed. 
The  picture  may  have,  then,  moral  or  log- 
ical or  technical  or  practical  value,  but  we 
no  longer  enjoy  it  aesthetically.  The  con- 
tent of  the  picture  as  aesthetic  presentation 
is  thus  also  fully  dependent  on  our  organism, 
not  on  the  structure  and  functions  of  our 
peripheral  organs  but  on  the  organization 
and  training  of  our  brain  cells  and  their 
connections.  Therefore  the  great  individ- 
ual differences  which  characterize  the  en- 
joyment of  real  pictures  —  but  even  in  the 
highest  appreciation  of  the  noblest  work 
there  is  nothing  which  cannot  find  its  com- 
plete causal  explanation  in  psychological 
terms. 


CONCLUSION 


ES,  every  aesthetic  demand  in 
regard  to  space-division  and 
outline,  light  values  and  color, 
content  and  meaning  and  ex- 
pression, can  be  understood  as  the  result 
of  psychological  conditions,  and  all  can  be 
related  to  the  causal  working  of  ganglion 
cells  and  nerve  fibres,  muscles  and  tendons ; 
laws  of  nervous  irritation  and  irradiation, 
nervous  excitement  and  inhibition  can  ex- 
plain the  totality  of  facts.  But  has  all 
this  any  bearing  on  the  practical  art  in- 
struction in  the  class-room  ?  At  the  first 
glance  we  all  are  inclined  to  answer  in  the 
affirmative  ;  we  gain  by  such  a  psychologi- 
cal study  a  concrete  positive  understanding 
of  the  processes  on  a  scientific  basis,  and 
the  more  we  know  of  a  situation  the  better 
it  must  be  for  us. 

Of  course,  no  one  can  deny  that  a  serious 
study  of  the  explanatory  principles  of  the 


108       Principles  of  Art  Education 

processes  involved  in  artistic  production 
and  enjoyment  is  not  only  indispensable  for 
every  student  of  psychology,  but  interest- 
ing and  even  fascinating  for  many  students 
of  art.  But  whether  it  is  of  direct  service 
for  the  teacher  of  art  in  his  teaching  work 
is  another  question.  And  here  a  sober 
second  thought  may,  perhaps,  come  not  at 
all  to  an  affirmative  answer.  Whoever  ex> 
pects  not  only  the  satisfaction  of  a  theoreti- 
cal interest,  but  practical  help  as  well, 
must  expect  that  the  causal  psychological 
explanation  will  give  hints  either  how  to  in- 
fluence the  child  correctly  or  how  to  deter- 
mine the  demands  of  the  picture  correctly. 
In  both  directions  the  ultimate  result 
would  be  failure.  Even  if  we  presuppose 
what  goes  far  beyond  the  legitimate  rights 
of  a  justified  presupposition,  namely,  that 
the  teacher  in  question  is  in  full  control  of 
all  the  psychological  and  physiological 
facts  known  to  science ;  and  secondly,  that 
the  teacher  has  a  full  psycho-physiological 
knowledge  of  the  individual  pupil  —  even 
then  we  should  be  helpless.  On  the  one 
hand,  science  gives  us  essentially  generali- 
ties, gives  us  general  categories  which  in- 
dicate the  directions  of  explanation,  but  is 


Principles  of  Art  Education       109 

still  far  removed  from  the  possibility  of 
canying  them  over  into  such  details  as 
would  be  needed  for  the  construction  of 
all  the  psycho-physical  effects  in  the  case 
of  a  complex  picture.  And  on  the  other 
hand,  even  if  we  had  all  that,  we  should  be 
as  powerless  as  the  astronomer  who  would 
try  to  use  his  exact  astronomical  knowledge 
for  the  purpose  of  moving  the  stars  in 
obedience  to  his  will.  The  stars  are  too 
large  and  too  far,  the  ganglion  cells  are 
too  small  and  too  well  protected.  Even  if 
we  knew  what  motor  brain  impulses  ought 
to  be  stimulated,  and  what  ought  to  be 
inhibited,  to  bring  the  child  into  the  right 
aesthetic  attitude,  we  cannot  indulge  in 
microgymnastics,  we  cannot  pull  and  push 
those  cells,  we  cannot  start  or  stop  those 
nervous  currents,  unless  we  do  it  by  the 
old-fashioned  way  of  showing  the  child 
beautiful  objects  —  and  then  all  our  fair 
knowledge  of  those  fibrils  and  ganglion 
cells  becomes  superfluous. 

But  there  is  still  another  factor  in  play 
that  is  still  more  dangerous.  The  teacher 
who  puts  his  interest  into  the  psychological 
understanding  of  the  artistic  processes  is 
in  danger  of  losing  sight  of  the  really 


110       Principles  of  Art  Education 

aesthetic  factors.  The  work  of  art  becomes 
to  him  a  function  of  the  psycho-physical 
apparatus,  the  artistic  task  becomes  a 
scientific  problem,  and  he  thus  trains  in 
himself  an  attitude  towards  the  picture 
which  is  certainly  antagonistic  to  the  atti- 
tude which  he  wants  to  bring  out  in  the 
child.  Instead  of  thinking  of  the  aesthetic 
aims  of  the  drawing,  the  ideal  ends  which 
it  seeks  to  fulfil,  he  thinks  of  the  psycho- 
logical and  physical  causes  of  the  pro- 
cesses in  the  child,  and  that  must  influence 
his  attitude  towards  him.  The  child  him- 
self is  then  treated  as  a  psycho-physical 
organism  in  which  certain  effects  are  me- 
chanically produced  by  certain  influences, 
but  not  as  a  personality  who  is  to  be  led 
to  love  beauty  and  to  live  in  ideals.  A 
certain  external  skilf  ulness  may  be  secured 
by  such  methods,  but  it  is  paid  for  by  a 
lack  of  sympathy  and  inspiration  ;  and  yet 
nothing  can  be  more  important  than  just 
this  which  is  lost,  the  position  of  the  art 
teacher  as  the  centre  of  aesthetic  inspira- 
tion in  the  class-room. 

I  cannot  help  saying,  therefore,  to  the 
art  teachers  that  there  is  great  danger  in 
overestimating  the  practical  value  of  the 


Principles  of  Art  Education      1H 

theoretically  so  interesting  psychological 
explanation  of  art.  Their  real  domain  is 
not  the  psychology  but  the  aesthetics  of 
drawing;  they  have  not  to  deal  with 
nerves  and  muscles,  but  with  noble  space- 
divisions  and  curves,  with  light  values  and 
colors,  with  the  expression  of  contents  and 
meanings.  They  have  not  to  deal  with  the 
processes  in  the  eye  and  brain,  but  with  the 
outer  world  of  space  and  light  and  beings, 
whose  full  truth  cannot  be  expressed  in  any 
other  terms  than  in  the  language  of  beauty. 
They  have  to  influence  the  child  not  by 
treating  him  according  to  psycho-physical 
prescriptions,  but  by  training  him  in  the 
real  sesthetical  attitude,  teaching  him  to 
express  the  beauty  of  space,  the  beauty  of 
light,  the  beauty  of  content,  and  finally, 
the  beauty  of  these  three  factors  harmo- 
nized in  real  pictures ;  and  this  whole  prog- 
ress ought  to  be  steadily  accompanied  by 
the  technical  training  of  a  careful  eye  and 
a  skilful  hand,  and  by  an  sesthetical  train- 
ing in  seeing  good  reproductions,  the 
masterpieces  of  the  world.  And  behind 
all  this,  there  must  be  as  background  the 
inspiring  influence  of  the  teacher  who 
believes  in  beauty,  whose  personality 


112       Principles  of  Art  Education 

irradiates  beauty  in  the  smallest  class- 
room, whose  atmosphere  inhibits  ugliness 
and  vulgarity  in  every  mind. 

Such  work,  quietly  but  steadily  done  in 
a  hundred  thousand  class-rooms  between 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific,  is  sacred 
work,  and  its  mission  for  the  noblest  devel- 
opment of  the  country  cannot  be  over- 
estimated. It  will  bring  great  art  to  this 
land.  History  has  always  shown  that 
great  art  arises  when  three  conditions  are 
fulfilled:  the  country  must  be  wealthy, 
must  develop  characteristic  national  ideals, 
and  must  show  a  love  for  beauty  in  the 
masses ;  the  first  two  conditions  are  becom- 
ing daily  more  fulfilled,  the  art  instruction 
has  to  bring  the  last  one.  The  wave  of 
art  is  swelling ;  since  the  days  of  the  Phila- 
delphia Fair  to  those  of  Chicago  and  St. 
Louis,  and  of  the  libraries  of  Washington 
and  Boston,  great  art  has  been  growing. 
As  the  great  American  novel  prepares  it- 
self through  widespread  reading  of  national 
novels,  so  great  American  Fine  Art  will 
come  through  the  enthusiastic  study  by 
millions  of  children. 

And  yet,  all  this  is  of  little  consequence 
compared  with  a  greater  purpose.  Great 


Principles  of  Art  Education      113 

art  may  be  near  or  may  be  far,  and  among 
those  millions  there  may  be  future  artists 
or  not  —  that  ought  not  to  count  if  the 
mission  of  the  artistic  instruction  in  school 
is  in  question.  We  want  to  open  the  eyes 
and  minds  of  those  millions  to  the  sun- 
shine  of  beauty,  to  carry  happiness  and 
idealism  into  the  hearts  of  those  young 
people,  into  the  homes  of  the  whole  Ameri- 
can nation.  Their  entire  school  knowledge 
and  surroundings  train  them  for  practical 
needs,  for  skill  and  achievement;  that 
must  be  so,  and  it  is  well.  Let  them  fight 
and  run  and  pull  and  push,  but  let  them 
never  forget  that  the  fight  is  not  merely 
for  the  fighting ;  we  must  aim  for  an  end 
in  which  we  can  find  satisfaction,  repose 
and  happiness.  Our  youth  do  not  learn 
that  and  do  not  see  it  in  their  surround- 
ings; the  chase  itself  becomes  a  habit, 
repose  appears  laziness.  The  nation  which 
had  in  pioneer  life  to  open  the  gigantic 
resources  of  a  new  country,  has  learned 
only  to  work  and  not  to  rest  from  work  in 
a  way  which  can  claim  the  same  dignity 
as  the  work  itself;  yes,  in  a  way  which 
gives  new  value  to  the  work  itself.  The 
only  ideal  rest  was  that  which  religion 


114       Principles  of  Art  Education 

promised;  on  earth  beauty  alone  gives 
that  repose  without  struggle.  That  is 
the  real  mission  of  art  instruction;  not 
quite  unlike,  indeed,  to  that  of  the  church, 
—  to  bring  into  every  home  and  into  every 
life  the  ideal  repose,  the  repose  in  the 
ideal ;  to  bring  us  that  rest  which  is  not 
fatigue  from  work,  or  —  another  desire  of 
the  ever  dissatisfied  mind — the  rush  of 
amusement;  no,  that  rest  which  is  com- 
plete satisfaction,  beyond  the  struggles  of 
the  day,  complete  harmonization  of  all  our 
energies,  complete  fulfilment  of  our  real 
personality. 


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